The Political System An army official with his back to the camera salutes a large group of service men. iStockphoto/Thinkstock 8 Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: Define politics. Analyze the political structure of bands. Analyze the political structure of chiefdoms. Analyze the political structure of states. Analyze politics, law, and crime in the United States. Discuss the influence of minority status on political power. Define the basic mechanisms of social control: socialization, religion, rewards, gossip and Discuss the common peaceful means for conflict resolution. Discuss the use of power as a means of conflict resolution. Define and explain crime. Discuss the various means by which internal conflict is commonly addressed. Define and explain rebellion and revolution. Nowhere is political power—the ability to make and implement decisions about public goals—shared equally by every member of society. Whether people share power broadly throughout the entire community, divide power between their family organization and specialized associations, or place power in the hands of fulltime governmental officials depends largely on the size and complexity of their societies. But whatever their political form, societies always have some system for maintaining social order and reestablishing order when rules have been broken. Some combination of childhood socialization, values, morality, religion, rewards for conformity, and threats of punishment is used everywhere to create an ordered society, although never with perfect success. When conflicts do arise, there are a variety of ways, both peaceful and violent, by which people seek to re-establish an orderly life. 8.1 Types of Political Orders According to Swartz, Turner, and Tuden (1966), politics is the way in which power is achieved and used to create and implement public goals. As such, politics is involved in organizing and controlling human social behavior. It is through its political system that a society exercises power to maintain order internally and to regulate its relations with other societies. Those to whom the right to power is delegated are said to have authority, or the right to legitimately use force or threaten the use of force to achieve social goals. In the study of politics, it is important to consider how power is delegated, as not every use of power in society is legitimate. Anthropologists have noted a variety of ways in which political power is channeled in different societies. In societies that have only a small number of specialized occupations, politics may be handled without the existence of a government: that 1 is, a body of officials who have the authority to create and administer a system of laws, formal rules that are binding on members of society at large. Complex societies have full-time political systems with officials who monopolize the legal authority to govern others. Simpler societies make use of other mechanisms for creating and implementing common goals. For instance, governing authority may be vested in the local community, in families, in voluntary associations, or in officials whose authority is limited to those areas not governed by the community, family, or voluntary associations. See Figure 8.1. Figure 8.1: Types of political orders Click here to view alternate text. Bands: Government by Community Societies in which people survive by foraging for wild foods in small local groups are called bands. They consist typically of 50 or 60 people who cooperate in economic activities and often share kinship ties. As late as the second half of the 19th century, bands were found in remote areas, such as subarctic North America, Greenland, and Siberia, as well as isolated parts of South America, Australia, and Southeast Asia. However, there are no known band societies today that exist in their traditional political form. In band societies, most political problems affect the entire local group such that it is generally the seat of legal authority. When a legal problem arises, the entire community will discuss the issue in a community gathering until everyone has had ample opportunity to express an opinion. The consensus that evolves out of the give and take of group discussion is the band equivalent of law. For example, the handling of homicide by the 19th-century Inuit of the northern coasts of North America illustrates the legal role of the community in a band society. The Inuit occupied a harsh environment that placed heavy demands on them. In a territory that offered few plant foods, hunters were under great stress to provide for their families. Game included some rather formidable animals such as the polar bear and large sea mammals that were not easily taken. It is little wonder that successful Inuit hunters were strong-willed and aggressive men. In spite of rules of etiquette that demanded humility, politeness, and generosity, tempers sometimes got out of hand, and violent deaths following disputes about food and women were not rare. Homicides were often dealt with by the families of the deceased. Revenge killings were legitimate, but might in turn lead to vengeance by the original killer’s kin. To avoid this, ultimate legal authority was vested in the community as a whole, which dealt with aggressive repeat offenders who were seen as threats to the common welfare. Boas (1888) described the role of community law enforcement among one group of Inuit: There was a native of Padli by the name of Padlu. He had induced the wife of a native of Cumberland Sound to desert her husband and follow him. The deserted husband, meditating revenge . . . visited his friends in Padli, but before he could accomplish his intention of killing Padlu, the latter shot him. . . . A brother of the murdered man went to Padli to avenge the death of his 2 brother; but he also was killed by Padlu. A third native of Cumberland Sound who wished to avenge the death of his relatives was also murdered by him. On account of all these outrages the natives wanted to get rid of Padlu, but yet they did not dare to attack him. When the pimain (headman) of the Akudmirmiut learned of these events he started southward and asked every man in Padli whether Padlu should be killed. All agreed; so he went with the latter deer hunting . . . and . . . shot Padlu in the back. (p. 582) Because the entire community had acted as a judicial body and authorized the killing, it was a legal execution, and they had no need to fear any retribution by Padlu’s relatives. As might be expected, band societies have no need for sufficient resources to support any full-time educational, economic, religious, military, judicial, legislative, or executive specialists. All leadership is charismatic. That is, a man or woman becomes a leader in some activity because of a personal talent in that area. Leadership also is unofficial; it is maintained only so long as a person demonstrates the qualities of excellence that draw a following. Charismatic leadership confers no formal authority, no power to coerce. A leader can only lend advice, persuade, or take the initiative. Coming from a man or woman of respected abilities or wisdom, the advice or action is apt to be followed by others. The leader in the hunt, for example, is likely to be a man of proven ability in locating, tracking, and capturing game; a leader in political matters is respected because of his broad experience and proven wisdom. In both cases, however, as abilities decline, so does the leader’s following. Tribes: Government by Families and Associations Pakistani officials have a discussion outside. Steve Raymer/National Geographic Stock Political systems exist to create a mechanism for social control and to promote group harmony. In this scene, officials and tribal leaders discuss agricultural plans. Societies with simple food domestication technologies that support local populations and that are small enough to need no full-time governmental authorities are known as tribes. Tribal societies are found in such places as North America, New Guinea, Melanesia, North America, India, and Afghanistan. Within tribes, legal authority is held by descent groups, such as lineages and clans (see Chapter 6), of the local group and by local voluntary associations (or sodalities). These are groups whose members are drawn from at least several of the families of the community and that carry out governing, military, policing, and economic functions. Sodalities such as a council of elders may, for instance, be made up of the heads of each of a community’s descent groups. Such decisionmaking bodies are effective because their membership is recruited from many kin groups so that the views of most or all of the community are well represented. One common type of sodality is based on age. These age-graded associations are voluntary associations whose membership is limited to persons of a particular 3 age category. They often play a role in such things as the military defense of the community and in policing the community itself in matters that do not traditionally fall within the realm of family law. By contrast, familial legal authority typically rules in domestic matters such as the contracting or dissolving of marriage and the punishment of family members for violation of one another’s rights. The tribes of the North American plains illustrated well the political role of voluntary associations. Each community typically had a dozen or so military societies. In some tribes, young men graduated from one society into the next as they aged; in others, they had to choose which they would join. The military associations exercised legal authority as governing agencies by preserving order during hunts and while camp was being moved, as well as by punishing lawbreakers. But they also performed social, recreational, and economic roles in hosting feasts and dances, holding intersociety competitions, keeping tribal traditions, and providing information about the location of buffalo herds. Policing Role Among Plains Indians, each military society usually held policing authority for only 1 year, so that this responsibility was rotated among the associations of a community, and no one monopolized the right to police power. Enforcement of tribal laws by military societies was also limited to crimes that harmed the community welfare. Thus, on communal buffalo hunts, someone who began to shoot too soon and frightened the herd away before others were prepared was likely to be punished. The emphasis was on making the culprit an example to discourage similar behavior by others. Public punishments included the destruction of a wrongdoer’s property, banishment from the camp, and death. The Plains Indians relied heavily on the migratory buffalo that passed through their territories each year, and competition for this valuable resource brought the highly mobile, horseback-hunting tribes into recurrent conflict. The military associations protected their communities against other plundering tribes. The greatest defenders of the tribe in each military society were rewarded with honor and the plunder of war. In ceremonial meetings, these warriors recounted their exploits in battle, and it was from among these men that more formal political leaders were selected for the tribe. Social Roles Social Structure of the Ache Indians Among the Ache, democratic principles hold the group together. There is no designated chief, and leaders tend to arise naturally. How does decision making take place in the Ache tribe, and what factors make that decision-m Plains military societies also played an important role in public recreation. They performed dances as public exhibitions and generally interacted with the audience in their celebrations. For their own members, the military associations provided fraternal camaraderie and a place in which deep friendships could evolve. 4 As in bands, leadership in tribes is charismatic. It is achieved by an individual’s personal ability to convince others that his or her unique qualities make him or her especially worthy of being followed. Thus, leadership is based on skill rather than the power of an inherited status. By and large, tribal society is egalitarian like the band society, in that every individual has more or less equal opportunity to obtain the necessities of life and the esteem of others through leadership activities. Leaders also include the charismatic entrepreneurs who stimulate local economic productivity (see bigmanship in Chapter 9). Chiefdoms: Government by Officials A society that unites a number of villages under the legal control of a government that recognizes the right of families to exercise some autonomous legal authority is a chiefdom. These types of societies are found in North America, Polynesia, parts of Africa, and ancient Hawaii. Although a chiefdom’s governmental official (called a chief) can legitimately use force in matters that concern the common welfare, kinship groups exercise a great deal of legal autonomy. Chiefdoms share some similarities with bands and tribes. For instance, laws that govern marriage and divorce are typically matters of family law, just as they are in bands and tribes. Similarly, the enforcement of laws concerning petty theft is often a responsibility of kinship groups in chiefdoms, as in bands and tribes. However, major crimes that concern the entire community, such as grand theft, homicide, or insults to the dignity of a chief, are typically punishable by the government officials who have authority over nonrelatives in legal matters. Thus, chiefdoms have a true professional government, but one whose officials do not monopolize all legal authority to govern society. Their authority is balanced by that of each community’s kinship groups, which govern themselves in those areas that most directly affect them. Each community in a chiefdom is likely to have a chief who acts as its political head, and groups of villages are usually unified under a district chief of higher rank than the local village ones. In some legal matters, members of the community may expect the chiefs or their delegated representatives to play the role of mediator between the conflicting parties, with the goal of re-establishing peaceful relations. In other cases, the chief may have the authority to determine guilt or innocence and exact punishment for an offense without consulting the members of the offender’s family. The position of chief is therefore a true office, and its holder has authority to legitimately wield power over others with whom the chief has no known kinship ties. The office of chief is most often hereditary, although which relative of a deceased chief will inherit the office may be decided by the surviving family members. In some cases, the community as a whole may have some say in the selection of the new chief from the group of possible heirs. Chiefdoms are typically theocratic societies in which the office of the chief is legitimized by both religious and secular authority. Indeed, some of the higher-ranking political officials may be considered sacred. In chiefdoms, the everyday functions of government include military defense, 5 local community policing, judicial activities, and drafting labor for public works projects. Probably the most important function of chiefs, however, is economic: to redistribute goods, provide services, and collect taxes. All families in the community are expected to contribute a portion of their annual produce to the warehouse. The chief then sees to it that these goods are redistributed, generally at community feasts or festivals, to those most in need. A chief’s power and prestige are often directly proportionate to his or her generosity. Indeed, the level of gift giving expected of a chief may exceed the total contributed by other families, so that the wealth of the chief’s family is gradually drained to benefit less prestigious families. Simple chiefdoms lack true social classes in which people’s rank depends on the importance of their occupations. But neither are they egalitarian, as their kinship groups are ranked in a social hierarchy in which some kin groups have greater social power and prestige than others. For this reason, chiefdoms are sometimes called rank societies (Fried, 1967; Service, 1962, 1978). Political offices are usually inherited so that they remain within certain families, and the highest-ranking families normally have control over the most important political offices. Beyond the superior social rank of chiefs’ families, some chiefdoms may develop a true class distinction between chiefs and commoners that cuts across communities (Earle, 1978). These complex chiefdoms also develop specialization in leadership roles and a more centralized political hierarchy. According to Henry T. Wright (1987), the political organization of chiefdoms varies in complexity along a continuum. In simple chiefdoms, political control is in the hands of a local elite, and there is only one level of political authority above that of the local community. Complex chiefdoms are those in which the competition for leadership at the higher level has created a class of chiefly competitors. As a result, these chiefdoms “characteristically cycle between one and two levels of [political] hierarchy above the level of the local community” (p. 43). In complex chiefdoms the community where the paramount chief resides is larger than those of the ordinary chiefs, partly because it is also the residence of his followers, who make up his power base, and partly because it is a center for major social rituals. Complex chiefdoms also have settlements of intermediate size that are controlled by subordinate chiefs. It is in the smallest settlements, however, that the primary work of subsistence production is done. Those who belong to the chiefly class occupy their own segregated neighborhoods within their communities or live in separate communities reserved for the noble group. Chiefs are also buried in segregated community locations, often near where major rituals occur and in burial grounds that are much more ornate than those of commoners. The economic role of chiefs as managers of redistribution shifts in complex chiefdoms from the distribution of goods to all families within the community to the extraction of tribute from the common class in producing communities and the redistribution of some of this tribute to the lower chiefs. As chiefdoms increase in complexity, the redistributive goods exacted as tribute 6 shift from basic subsistence goods to commodities produced by specialists. These economic specialists, who produce prestige goods—which are not available to commoners—may be supported either by the food producers in their communities or by the chiefs with payments gained from the tribute paid by the food-producing class. The Rwala Bedouins: A Pastoral Chiefdom According to Musil (1928), the Rwala had the largest and most powerful tentdwelling Bedouin chiefdom of the northern Arabian Peninsula. Although much of their life was organized around the concept of kinship, the Rwala also had officials with authority beyond the boundaries of their own kin. These chiefs or sheikhs were officers whose positions were inherited within particular patrilineal lineages. In addition to local sheikhs whose authority was felt throughout an entire camp, there were regional chiefs as well, whose authority derived from a lineage of greater prominence than those of the local chiefs. There was also a paramount chief or sheikh, often called a “prince,” of all the Rwala. His main duties were to conduct relations with the national government and with chiefs of other Bedouin peoples, but he had little power over the internal politics of the Rwala themselves. Life in the camps was largely governed by kinship. Each man saw himself as the center of a group of relatives, or kindred, known as the ahl. A man’s ahl consisted of all his sons and their sons, his father and grandfather, and their brothers. This group of male relatives had strong obligations to him and could bear the guilt for his misdeeds. People were also organized into larger kinship groups called feriz that included relatives who traced their ancestry through their fathers back to a common male ancestor. Marriages were preferably within one’s feriz. In particular, a man was encouraged to marry his father’s brother’s daughter or his father’s father’s brother’s son’s daughter. A woman could marry no other man unless her designated cousin waived his prior claim. The marriage preference system counteracted the fragmenting effects of the Bedouin pastoral adaptation to a desert environment, kept inheritable property from being dispersed, and increased familial solidarity (Barth, 1954; Murphy & Kasdan, 1959). The Rwala made their living by herding camels, which could provide transportation, milk for food, and hides and hair for manufacturing items. Camels were traded to merchants in return for cash, weapons, clothing, and other necessities. Trade was important, for the desert environment did not permit the Bedouins to be completely self-sufficient. Warfare, which consisted most often of surprise night raids on the enemy camp, was a central fact of Rwala life and tinged many other aspects of their culture. The main reason for warfare was to retrieve animals that had been stolen. Weaker groups of Bedouins and villagers paid protection tribute (khuwa) to more powerful ones such as the Rwala. The receiver of this protection “tax” was bound to protect those who paid it and to restore any property that was stolen from them by raiders. The Rwala enjoyed war because it was an opportunity not only to win booty but also to display their skill and courage. Yet, 80% of Rwala men died as a result of warfare, such that there were few elderly men. 7 Blood feuds were also common among the Rwala. Kin were obligated to avenge the murder of a relative, and the murderer’s kin shared the guilt to the third generation. The avengers therefore could take the life of a relative of the actual culprit, should they find one before finding the murderer. Vengeance of this kind was legitimate, a matter of family law. Guilty parties were not permitted to defend themselves against avengers, but instead had to seek the protection of a powerful sheikh who aided them in reaching a traditional place of refuge, where they stayed until the avengers agreed to accept a blood price of horses, camels, and weapons to compensate them for the death. Today, the Bedouin, who number about 5 million, live a more settled life. Camels for the most part have been replaced by Toyota trucks for transportation, and tents have given way to cinder-block houses. Sheep and goat herds remain an important source of livelihood for many Bedouin, but other occupations and sources of income have also been adopted. Some engage in dry farming. Others derive income from the tourist market. Members of the older generation sometimes complain that younger people know too little about herding and are only skilled at repairing trucks and televisions. States: The Official Monopoly of Law Because chiefdoms vary in their degree of social complexity and the power of their governments, the social differences between a complex chiefdom and a small state society may be slight. The defining difference is essentially one of political ideology: a state is a political unit in which a centralized government monopolizes the right to exercise legal force and control the affairs of local communities. It has power to levy taxes, pass laws, and draft people into work or war. Law The principle that a state monopolizes the legitimate use of force is well illustrated by Ashanti law. The Ashanti, described by Rattray (1923, 1929), made up a West African state in what is now Ghana. The Ashanti state was ruled by a divine king who, like Louis XIV of France, represented the very source of the state’s authority. So sacred was the king’s personage that cursing him was punishable by a heavy fine. Indeed, to curse the king was such a terrible thing that it could only be spoken of by the euphemism, “to bless the king.” Only the divine king or his duly authorized representatives had the authority to use any force. Because any crime involved the use of force, it was, in a sense, theft of the king’s authority and an insult to the sacred ancestors that he represented. All crimes were therefore punishable by death. The view that crimes were punishable primarily because they undermined the authority of the state and only secondarily because they victimized others led to another interesting aspect of Ashanti law. Like murder, suicide involved taking the life an Ashanti and was also a contemptible affront to the king and the ancestors. So the body of a suicide was tried and, if found guilty, decapitated. In this way, Ashanti law symbolically demonstrated the sanctity of the state’s authority. Odd as this legal custom may seem to North Americans, it is not very 8 different in principle from U.S. and Canadian customs in which persons who attempt suicide may be confined in mental hospitals by judicial order for having tried to kill themselves. Although North Americans speak of such confinement as “hospitalization” for “treatment of a mental disorder,” the symbolic aspects of the customs are similar. Both the Ashanti and North Americans punish suicide offenders through a judicial process. In addition to legal aspects, the chiefdom and the state society differ in their subsistence activities. Specifically, states have more intensive agriculture based on innovations in agricultural technology. While the plow and draft animals are almost always present in societies that support a state-level political organization, these societies also use other agricultural technologies. Irrigation systems, for example, play such a major role in the agriculture of most states that one scholar, Karl Wittfogel (1957), has suggested that it was the need to control and regulate water resources that led to the rise of the world’s first states. This view has not been widely accepted because it overemphasizes the single factor of irrigation at the expense of other influential factors, such as population growth, trade, diplomacy, and warfare. But it reminds us that irrigation was an important technological development in increasing the productivity of the state’s subsistence activities. Robert Carneiro (1970) suggests that states arise in circumscribed environmental zones—areas surrounded by mountains, deserts, or other natural barriers to easy emigration—when population growth causes increased social competition for natural resources. This competition leads to social stratification and the domination of some groups by others. Centralized political power creates elites who are able to exact tribute and taxes from the dominated groups. Circumscribed habitats make it difficult for those who are losing in the competition to withdraw to other areas. Once states develop, they expand at the expense of neighboring chiefdoms, tribes, and bands, whose smaller populations make them less powerful. Members of a state society may number in the millions, owing to the food supply provided by intensive agriculture. People may live in densely packed towns and cities in which little or no agriculture may be practiced, or in smaller, rural communities that produce particular kinds of food, which can be exchanged for the nonagricultural products of the larger communities. While Carneiro emphasized environmental and population-related factors to explain the emergence of states, his ideas do not apply to early states in such places as East Africa and Polynesia. Proposing a more comprehensive model, Claessen (1996, 2000) argues that additional factors—such as economy, demography, conflicts, and ideology—have been integral to state formation. For example, he argues that the development of early states was supported by a specific ideology that explains and supports governmental hierarchy and social inequality (such as, the division of society into rulers and the ruled). Early State Societies It is generally held that by 3500 BCE human society had crossed the threshold into the world’s first state society in southern Mesopotamia. This was followed shortly thereafter by similar developments in Egypt, India, China, and the 9 Western Hemisphere. V. Gordon Childe (1950) summarized the 10 fundamental characteristics of the world’s earliest states: population growth urbanization greatly increased full-time specialization of labor beyond specialization in food production long-distance trade in luxuries the emergence of class-stratification with a privileged ruling class of religious, political the development of a political organization in which membership is based on place of residen draft labor and monumental public works projects such as the building and maintenance of tem the use of tribute and taxation to create a central store of surplus goods to support the pr the development of writing to facilitate the process of managing society (via the necessary the development of scientific techniques such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy that ai 8.2 Gender and Politics In societies throughout the world, political offices are held predominantly by men. For instance, in the United States in 2013 women represent 18.3% of the members of Congress, 12% of the governors, and about 23.4% of state legislators. But even in societies in which men hold most positions of political power, women have a degree of political power and influence. In patriarchal societies in which men are economically and socially dominant, women’s power and influence is indirect, but in more egalitarian societies it can be formally institutionalized. For instance, in some egalitarian societies the political organization has been characterized by a joint male–female system of authority, and in some the greatest solidarity at the local village level has been among women. Matrifocal Societies Women have had the greatest political power in those societies in which they are the economic producers and control economic resources. Nancy Tanner (1974), a specialist in the anthropology of legal processes, investigated matrifocal societies, where the primary solidarity relations involve women. She found that women in these societies were decision makers and at least as assertive as men, in addition to playing the preeminent economic role. Female relatives were in frequent contact with each other through mutual-aid groups that were a source of power and support that was not dependent on men. In these societies, most women generally occupied central kinship positions within their families of birth. For instance, the role of a mother in the family was typically more important than that of a wife. More recent research reveals other effects of matrifocality on the family and household organization. For example, in West African matrifocal societies, marriage is a relatively easy and even reversible process: Women may have several partners over time, and there is often substantial support and flexibility in childrearing (Bledsoe, 1990; Meekers, 1992). Others have emphasized generational effects, such as the way in which daughter-based parental care underlies matrifocality in some Caribbean societies (Quinlan, 2008). However, it is important to note that even while women may have relatively more power in matrifocal societies 10 compared to strictly patriarchal societies, matrifocality can coexist with male dominance (Brogger & Gilmore, 1997). In contemporary nation-states, women have also achieved high political positions, although not to the degree found in matrifocal societies. Worldwide, nearly 40 women have held positions as prime minister or president of their respective countries in the first 13 years of the 21st century. Yet worldwide statistics indicate that women continue to be numerically underrepresented in governmental offices. The Iroquois Nineteenth century illustration by artist Friedrich Wilhelm Goedsche depicting an Iroquois woman wearing a cape and holding a child, followed by an Iroquois man with a musket. An Iroquois chief watches with a dagger. Album/Florilegius/Album/SuperStock The Iroquois are often cited as a culture in which women played important political roles. Can you think of another culture in which women are important to the political system? What about a culture in which women are uninvolved politically? The Iroquois of the North American Great Lakes region have often been cited as a society whose culture defined women and men as equals. According to the 19th-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1851a), Iroquois children belonged to their mothers’ families. Husbands were in-laws within their wives’ households and had no authority over their wives or their children. Houses and gardens were owned by women and inherited by daughters, so women were not economically dependent on men. The highest governmental officials were a council of 50 chiefs, or sachems. These offices were hereditary within the maternal families; they most often went from a man to his younger brother or to a sister’s son, but the actual choice was made by a vote within the family. Because only women were permitted to select the candidates for other family members to accept or reject, Iroquois women exercised the authority of political office in this way. Although only males were chosen to fill these offices, it was usually possible for a family to select an infant as a sachem. Functionally, such a choice amounted to electing the infant’s mother to the office, as she fulfilled all the regular duties of a sachem on behalf of her son until he became mature enough to exercise the authority of his office. The Dahomeans According to historian Karl Polanyi (1966), women in the West African kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin), played even more prominent roles in political office than did Iroquois women. In the Dahomey government, every office held by a male had a corresponding position held by a female who was responsible for overseeing the work of the male official. Men held their offices in various places throughout the kingdom, while the women resided at the royal palace, where they could report to the king. Men who served the king could only see the king if they were accompanied by the women who maintained oversight of their work. Even the king had such a counterpart, the Queen Mother, whose status was higher than that of the king. The Dahomean army had a similar organization. In the 1800s, the Dahomean army consisted of nearly 11 equal numbers of male and female warriors and officers. The elite military corps that guarded the palace was comprised of about 2,500 celibate women warriors. The Dahomean joint male–female system for organizing the government and the military functioned very effectively to perpetuate the authority of the king by insulating him from male competitors. The Kingdom of Dahomey existed from 1600 until about 1900, when it came under the control of France and many of its traditional social forms were then transformed under colonial rule. The Lobedu According to Eileen J. Krige and J. D. Krige (1943), the Lobedu of what is now Mozambique and some of their neighbors vested supreme authority in queens. The Lobedu queens had no military groups to enforce their authority. Instead, they held their office because of their religious power to bring rain to their people and to withhold it from their enemies. Thus, the Lobedu queen was the source of her subjects’ welfare and general prosperity, and they regarded her as sacred. Her life was filled primarily with religious responsibilities and ritual prohibitions designed to perpetuate the well-being of her nation. At the end of a reign of approximately 40 years, she was expected to commit ritual suicide—a custom that was done away with in the 1950s. The Lobedu queen was not permitted to marry, although she might bear children whose “father” would be selected from among her relatives. She was expected to maintain a “harem” of women who were bestowed upon her as “wives” by local chiefs and nobles of her society and sometimes by foreign leaders. This custom created a network of political alliances that ensured loyalty and good relations between other important officials and the Lobedu queen, who became a “sonin-law” to the wife-givers. The queen sometimes created similar advantageous political ties with Lobedu men by arranging marriages between them and women of the harem. In implementing these customs, the Lobedu queen played roles very similar to those that were elsewhere played by kings who entered marriages primarily for political reasons. The Ibo Kamene Okonjo (1976) has described a similar female–male political organization among the Ibo of Nigeria, who had two monarchs, a queen and a king. They both exercised authority in their own areas of responsibility. The king’s responsibilities primarily involved the lives and activities of men, while the queen was consulted on matters that affected women. Men and women had separate political organizations that paralleled each other in form and function. For instance, women settled disputes among women, but made decisions that affected both women and men. Margery Perham (1937) documented how in 1929 Ibo women exercised their political power by rioting against the British colonial government to express their dissatisfaction with policies that they deemed harmful to women’s interests in Nigeria. Called the “the women’s war” by the Ibo, this political action influenced about 2 million people over an area of 6,000 square miles. During and after colonialism, Ibo women played a major role in economic and political changes within Nigeria. They were particularly integral to agriculture, industrial production, trade, and political developments (Chuku, 2013). Gender Equality in Law 12 The family is often considered a separate entity in legal matters. For instance, in chiefdoms, the enforcement of laws pertaining to families is under the authority of kinship groups. In societies with state governments that monopolize the right to use force, the law often treats the family as a special institution. Laws that do not support the traditional customs of family life may exempt the family from the usual rules of law. Even when family life is not exempted from the principles of law that might impinge on it, enforcement of those laws may not be rigorous. Thus, the legal rights of men and women may differ significantly in matters that members of society perceive as related to the family. The insularity of the family makes it an institution in which gender inequality can lead to abuses that are not publicly addressed. In many societies a husband can avoid the charge of murder of his wife by asserting that the killing was done in defense of “family honor.” For instance, until 1989 Brazilian courts accepted the defense of family honor in cases where it judged that the killing was in response to a wife’s adultery. As another example, the custom of surgically removing the clitoris of young girls, which is practiced in some countries, is a means of perpetuating women’s subordination. However, human rights activists from various countries increasingly view this practice as a human rights violation. The legal systems of all contemporary nation-states arose in the context of gender inequality, which has often been a taken-for-granted aspect of the prestate culture. Thus, the legal interests of women (and racial minorities) tended to be ignored. And, in many cases, gender inequality was initially written into law when states were first formed. For instance, the male authors of the U.S. Constitution limited full citizenship, including the right to vote, to adult white males. The federal Constitution gave the authority to regulate voting to the states, and within 31 years, every state had explicitly denied or revoked women’s right to vote. Women’s right to vote did not get enacted until the 19th Amendment (which gives women the right to vote) became law on August 26, 1920, 133 years after the Constitution was adopted. The change was not due to a sudden shift in opinion about sexual equality; rather, it was the culmination of a long process of change in American values. As is common in the process of political change, there were previously both actions to limit women’s rights as well as to enhance them. In 1867, the 14th Amendment explicitly defined “citizens” as male. During the 1880s, female suffrage was debated at the federal level, but was not accepted. In 1895, Utah gave women the right to vote, and Idaho did the same in 1896. In 1910, women in the state of Washington were granted the right to vote. Seven years later, 500 women were arrested in Washington, D.C., for participating in a silent vigil in favor of women’s suffrage. But, in the same year, seven states granted women either partial or full suffrage. The following year, female suffrage was given support by the U.S. President, and two years later the 19th Amendment was adopted. 8.3 Race and Ethnicity in Politics: The Case of Indigenous Peoples An indigenous village sits on a mountainside overlooking a nuclear power plant. 13 iStockphoto/Thinkstock The number of small, independent societies in the world is rapidly decreasing. The modern world is already impacting the most isolated indigenous societies. Political power is not always equally shared by every social group. Minority statuses are typically not as influential in political life as are nonminorities. Indigenous peoples are groups that were at one time politically sovereign in their own territory, but have since become minority populations, often by conquest by a more powerful society. Indigenous peoples are commonly the most disenfranchised groups in modern nation-states. Indigenous Peoples Today, about 300 to 350 million people, or nearly 6% of the world’s population, have “indigenous” status. As we shall see, however, most indigenous people do not continue to live their ancestral way of life. Those who do are an even smaller minority. Indigenous peoples live on all continents. They are found in about half of the 161 member states of the United Nations. As of the 2010 census, there are about 2.9 million Native Americans in the United States, where they represent about 1% of the population. About 1.2 million “First Nations” people reside in Canada. There are tens of millions of indigenous Indian people in Central and South America. In Scandinavia there are about 70,000 Sami (formerly known as Lapps). Maoris make up about 600,000 members of New Zealand’s population. The Australian census indicates that there are over 500,000 Aboriginal Australians. In Mexico, there are over 60 different indigenous groups that together comprise almost 10% of the Mexican population. Asia is the home of the largest number of indigenous people, but many are also found throughout Africa, India, the Pacific Islands, and Europe. The ancestors of today’s indigenous peoples once occupied most of the world. Conquest and colonization changed that. Many have been dispossessed of their traditional lands and have resettled. Those whose lands were of little use to the national economies of the conquering states remain in their native territories, although even these people have typically been forced into restricted areas such as the Indian reservations of the United States. The territories of today’s indigenous peoples, such as deserts, tundras, forests, mountains, and islands, can be termed frontier areas, lands that are unproductive for industrialized agriculture. But the insulation that frontier areas have provided for their inhabitants in the past is weakening. Their natural resources are gradually attracting more and more outsiders, both individuals and corporations, which are seeking to exploit them for the benefit of the more urbanized economies of the states that claim sovereignty over them. In many places around the world, indigenous peoples are disappearing because of these outside influences. In fact, although there are still 200 million indigenous people in the world, many indigenous cultures have become extinct. There are three general ways in which indigenous cultures disappear: acculturation, ethnocide, and genocide. Acculturation When two previously distinct cultures come in contact, they both change. As 14 noted in chapter 2, this process is called acculturation. While acculturation generally causes both cultures to change, it can change a culture so much that it loses most of its own traditional characteristics and, in effect, becomes extinct. Ethnocide Sometimes the destruction of a traditional way of life is carried out by the deliberate, systematic policies of the dominant culture. Such a process is called ethnocide. The effect of ethnocide is that a group is denied the right to enjoy, develop, and disseminate its own traditional culture and language. Politically dominant societies may legally require that indigenous peoples send their children to schools that train them in the dominant culture and language. In some cases these are boarding schools, where the children must live for long periods of time, far from their own families. Often the use of their native language is not only discouraged but also forbidden and punished. Removed from the normal process of socialization in their own native culture, they return home ill-equipped to carry on their parents’ way of life. Missionary efforts also have contributed to the destruction of indigenous ways of life by working for the abolition of all forms of marriage other than monogamy and attacking traditional religious beliefs (Ribiero, 1971; Walker, 1972). In particular, indigenous people’s conversion to new religions often has profound effects, as religious affiliation is a key aspect of social identity (Dow & Sandstrom, 2001). Extinction Refugees with No Hope Khwe and !Xue tribes gather in the tent city; a tribal representative explains the predicaments facing these tribes. The San culture, whom you were introduced to in a previous chapter, face the threat of cultu Do you think anthropologists could play a role in addressing the issues faces by the San? If It is not just traditional ways of life that are changing and disappearing. In some cases, the people themselves are becoming extinct, due in large part to illnesses that urbanized societies introduced to indigenous peoples, and due to governmental policies of eliminating the native peoples of regions that the more powerful society sought to control. Such policies often resulted in genocide. Genocide Related to ethnocide, the destruction of a culture, is the practice of genocide, the systematic destruction of a people. Many of the indigenous people of the world have been and are being systematically exterminated. Military campaigns against native peoples have been only one way in which the extinction of whole societies has occurred. Biological warfare also has been used. In the earlier days of U.S. history, military leaders considered distributing clothing and blankets infected with smallpox and other diseases to some Native Americans, ostensibly as gifts. Native people also had been given gifts of poisoned foods and had sometimes even been hunted for sport (Bonwick, 1870; Calder, 1874; Horwood, 1969). In the past decade in many parts of Latin America, Indians have been killed by settlers moving onto their traditional lands. This small-scale warfare is carried out with guns, bombs, dynamite, and even rapid-fire weapons from 15 helicopters by private individuals, while national governments have turned a blind eye to the killing. In some cases, despite the presence of indigenous people, government agencies have declared traditional native lands to be “empty” and therefore legitimately available for settling by nonindigenous farmers, miners, and land speculators. For instance, in 1978, in the Department of Alta Verpaz, Guatemala, non-Indian landowners tried to evict Kekchi Indians from lands they had lived on for generations. When the Indians protested to the mayor in the nearby town of Panzos, 100 were killed and 300 wounded. Within 4 years the federal government had defined all Indians as “subversives,” and a military campaign against them had begun. In 1982 government forces massacred 302 Chuj Indians in the village of Finca San Francisco in the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The only survivors were 20 men who were away from the village at the time. Over a 6-month period, between 2,000 and 10,000 Indians were killed by government forces. As of 1992, over a million people have been displaced from their homelands by these conflicts, and about 200,000 have left the country to find refuge in other parts of Central America. Thomas Gregor (1983) describes the impact of the immigration of nonindigenous people into Brazil. The first European explorer arrived on the Brazilian coast in 1500. During the next 4 centuries, deaths from European diseases and intentional killings by bounty hunters reduced the numbers of the native population. Some were taken into slavery and others simply dispossessed of their lands. Now the native Indian population of Brazil is only 10% of what it originally was. Skulls of victims at the Killing Fields in Cambodia displayed in a glass-cased memorial. iStockphoto/Thinkstock Unfortunately, the effects of genocide are still present in the world today. Here, skulls from the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, are memorialized. The effects of such violence have even penetrated indigenous groups that have had little direct contact with outsiders. Gregor focuses on the Mehinaku, a single village tribe that lives in a vast protected reservation in the Mato Grosso of Brazil. Despite their official protection and relative isolation, contact with Brazilians has been sufficient to undermine the security of their lives. Gregor quotes one Mehinaku villager as saying, “Last night my dream was very bad. I dreamed of a white man” (1983, p. 1). According to the Mehinaku, such dreams portend illness. The symbolism is apt because, in the words of Gregor, “In the early 1960s, almost 20% of the tribe died in a measles epidemic, and the villagers continue to suffer from imported diseases for which they have neither natural nor acquired immunity” (Gregor, 1983, p. 2). The extreme lack of political influence of indigenous peoples can be illustrated by the case of Native Americans in the United States. In 2010 there were about 2.9 million people in the United States legally defined as American Indians. Yet the impact of minority status on indigenous Americans is clear: Native Americans have the lowest life expectancy, at 63 years, and the highest unemployment rates, about 50%, of any ethnic or racial group in the United States. They also 16 fall below the nation as a whole in average income, housing, and education. Contemporary Processes of Assimilation Originally, Native Americans were the only inhabitants of the lands now under control of the U.S. government. Today, they find themselves in the unusual position of being citizens both of the United States and of tribal groups that the Supreme Court has called “domestic dependent nations” of the United States (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 10 [1831]). This ambiguous legal state of affairs stems from the political history of relations between the U.S. government and the original Native American societies that it conquered as it expanded its borders. From the viewpoint of Native Americans, the founders of what was to become the United States entered North America as immigrants. Although the incoming population was originally small, its numbers grew rapidly from continued immigration and a high birth rate, and its economic and political power increased based on the development of industry and technology. At first, the U.S. government formally recognized the sovereignty of Native American tribes. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, ratified by the First Congress in 1789, declared, “The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent.” (Northwest Ordinance, 1787) Nevertheless, as the immigrant population expanded across much of the North American continent, its citizens entered lands occupied by Native Americans, who found themselves overwhelmed by U.S. military power. When Native American societies did attempt to regulate their relations with the U.S. government and minimize the loss of their own lands and cultural identities by the negotiation of treaties, they were treated as foreign nations. Thus Native American tribes typically ceded some of their lands to the United States, while reserving other lands for themselves. The U.S. government acknowledged Native American sovereignty over their own lands, while sometimes promising economic aid and educational rights to the tribal groups in return for the ceded lands. Native American–U.S. relations never remained as clear-cut as the contents of these treaties suggest, however. The expansion of the U.S. domain eventually engulfed the various Native American territories and left Native American societies in a more powerless position than that of other peoples who had entered into treaties with the United States. In 1823, the Supreme Court declared that the U.S. government had the right to govern Native Americans, saying that “the discovery and conquest gives the conquerors sovereignty over and ownership of the lands obtained” (Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. 542). Thus, lands that Native Americans thought that they had reserved to themselves through treaties became officially administered as parts of the United States itself. Tribes were no longer to be treated as sovereign nations within their own territories but as dependent peoples of the U.S. government. This process was formalized when the U.S. Congress unilaterally passed legislation in 1924 that declared all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States to be U.S. 17 citizens. Following the extension of U.S. citizenship to Native Americans, it was easy to forget that “reservations” were U.S. lands that had been held in trust for Native Americans who had not yet adjusted to mainstream U.S. life. U.S. treaty obligations to residents of Native American lands came to be seen by many non-Native Americans as “special treatment” by the federal government. There followed a period during which tribes were encouraged to disincorporate as tribal entities in return for settlement of claims that they had unsuccessfully pursued for lands lost to states and to the federal government. Some tribes ceased to exist under this policy, but others remained. Today, there are still 287 Native American reservations in the United States, governed in part by the tribes, in part by federal bureaus, and in part by the states in or next to which they are located. The uneasy mix of governing powers that controls the destinies of reservation residents is a continuing source of conflict, both among Native Americans and between reservation governments and non-Native American political bodies. For instance, Crees and other tribes whose traditional lands straddled the U.S.– Canadian border were guaranteed the right to pass unimpeded from one country to the other by an early treaty between the United States and Canada. This right is still in force, although U.S. border officials occasionally express annoyance at its use by Native Americans whose vehicles are immune to the searches that may legally be made of other vehicles that cross the border. Many times the legal conflicts over Native American rights become major court cases because of the economic interests at stake. For instance, treaties with the Lumhi and several other tribes in the state of Washington have guaranteed them free and unregulated fishing rights. These rights have been challenged by representatives of the commercial fishing industry and by government agencies concerned with recreational fishing, both of which have economic interests in the maintenance of fishing quotas that those treaties prevent them from imposing on members of the tribes. In Utah, important legal cases have been fought in the 1980s over whether the state government has the right to tax oil companies for oil produced by wells on the Ute Indian reservation, and over the right of the tribe to exercise police authority over predominantly non-Native American towns that lie within the Ute reservation. In 1989 the Ute government declared that the federal government and the state of Utah had abrogated their contractual obligation to build irrigation projects on the reservation in return for rights to irrigated water that flows from the reservation—opening the way for the tribe to withhold that water in the future. In Idaho, a conflict continues that threatens a major source of revenue for the Shoshone and Bannock of the Fort Hall Reservation. For years, sales of goods such as cigarettes at untaxed prices have been an important attraction for tourist dollars on the reservation. The Idaho state government is now asserting that this practice is illegal, and that the tribe must collect state taxes on all such sales. The tribal government, on the other hand, asserts that the state of Idaho has no 18 authority over tribal business practices, as reservation lands are not legally part of the state. A similar conflict is occurring between the state of New York and two Indian tribes, the Mohawks and the Seneca. Sometimes the conflicting views of Native American authority to govern their own lands have reached the point of forceful and even violent confrontations. For instance, in 1986, the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, refused to renegotiate the rights for non-Native Americans’ use of the Pima highway, an important commuter road on reservation land. In response, the tribe closed the highway to further use by non-Native Americans. Bonfires and barricades stopped the flow of traffic until the city government capitulated. In July 1989, the New York state police sealed off the St. Regis Reservation because Mohawk American Indians had continued to open gambling casinos to tourists from New York, a state that does not allow gambling. After several raids of the reservation casinos by state police, a Mohawk group called the Sovereignty Security Force blocked the main highway in protest against state and federal agencies that they believed were intervening illegitimately in the internal affairs of the tribe by attempting to prohibit gambling, a source of millions of dollars of revenue that the tribal government had authorized. New York state troopers responded with checkpoints of their own on roads into the reservation. For years afterwards, New York state troopers were posted on the reservation, and the casinos remained closed. It was not until April 6, 2000, that the federal government finally agreed to permit the Mohawk to offer casino gambling on land held in trust for the tribe by the Department of Interior. The unusual legal situation of indigenous peoples in the United States involves a complicated tangle of conflicting views about who has sovereignty over reservation lands. Tribal, state, city, and federal governments are all involved. Sometimes the tribes themselves disagree about who best represents their interests. Within the federal government, conflicts sometimes arise about which government body is responsible for determining policy on reservations. For instance, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is usually the dominant federal party, but in some cases, policies that influence American Indian lands adjacent to national forests or parks are set by the National Forest Service or National Park Service. Because vast sums of money are often at stake in these conflicts, they will likely continue. Indigenous Peoples Today In response to the influx of outside forces such as the logging and mining industries, indigenous peoples throughout the world are forming organizations to influence both national and international policies that affect their autonomy. For instance, in 1974, the International Indian Treaty Council was formed in the United States to bring Native American concerns before international bodies such as the United Nations. It obtained status as a nongovernmental consultative organization at the United Nations in 1977. In 1978 Native Americans also formed the Indian Law Resource Center to support Indian legal rights in the U.S. court system and through international groups such as the Council on Human Rights. Many such organizations now exist throughout most of the 19 world. A similar international organization, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), was organized in 1975. Its members are made up of delegates who now represent over 60 million of the world’s indigenous peoples and have observer status within the United Nations. The WCIP advocates for indigenous peoples throughout the world. In 1982, in response to the demands of indigenous peoples’ organizations, the UN Commission on Human Rights “established an annual Working Group on Indigenous Populations to gather information about the situation of indigenous peoples world-wide and make recommendations about future international laws to protect their rights” (Burger, 1987, p. 61). Beginning in the 1990s, numerous Latin American nations have adopted constitutional provisions recognizing, in principle, indigenous rights or at least a multicultural framework for the continued existence of indigenous people within their larger countries. In 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” which recognized indigenous people’s right to self-determination within their own communities and full rights to nationality and employment within the countries in which they are found. These and other rights recognized in the Declaration have led to the rise of numerous organizations involved in the political processes of advocating on behalf of indigenous peoples around the world. Click here to view alternate text. 8.4 Social Control: The Imposition of Order All societies have a variety of mechanisms by which the social behavior of people is controlled to maintain order or to re-establish order once rules have been broken. Social efforts to create orderly behavior begin at birth and continue throughout life. Some mechanisms for bringing about and maintaining conformity with acceptable behavior include early teaching of accepted customs and instilling values that motivate people to conform. Other mechanisms are punishments for rule violations and rewards for conformity. Malinowski (1926) pointed out that rules may be obeyed for a number of reasons: They may be followed because violating them brings public ridicule; because playing by the rules brings more rewarding interaction with others; because they are sacred, and supernatural punishment will result from breaking them; or because they are matters of law enforced by the machinery of society. They may also be self-enforcing due to their practical utility. Socialization The basic way we learn to fit into a social order is through our childhood socialization or enculturation (see Chapter 2). We learn about our culture, and we come to see the common expectations that others have about our behavior. Those habits learned early in life set the pattern for later relationships outside our home and community. Effective socialization can head off problems by establishing patterns of behavior that others find acceptable. Part of enculturation is learning to feel that some ways of behaving are better than others. As explained in Chapter 2, values are part of the feeling subsystem of a culture and may be defined as our attitudes or feelings about right and wrong 20 behavior. This broad category may then be divided into various types such as moral, spiritual, or environmental values. Moral values are the attitudes or rules that govern our relationships with our fellow human beings. Piety or spiritual values define our relationship to the supernatural and may be reflected in the following of specific religious rules of behavior such as the Jewish kosher laws, rules against blasphemy, or rules about working on a sacred day. Environmental values deal with our relationship to our physical environment so that concerns would include pollution and the protection of endangered species. Although morality and environmental values may be understood in purely practical terms, such as the need for an orderly social life or an awareness that needed resources are limited, people may accept them because they are supported by religious teaching or simply because they are traditional. Note, for instance, that the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments begin with rules of piety such as “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” but also include moral rules such as “Thou shalt not steal.” Religion and Social Control In fact, another major force for the maintenance of social order is religion. The rites of passage that symbolize stages in the life of the individual as a member of society are typically religious rituals. Myths and legends also contribute an aura of sanctity to a way of life and increase people’s respect for the social order. Taboos and ceremonial obligations further structure life in ways that demand predictable conformity from members of a community. Finally, in some societies, religious ideology directly mandates a moral life with the promise of supernatural rewards for proper social conduct and punishments for wrong living. The role of religion in maintaining social order is illustrated by the Hopi Indians of the southwestern United States. As embodiments of evil among the Hopi, witches were called Two Hearts. They loved darkness, death, and other things that humans despise. Witches were put to death if they did not confess their evil deeds. So the accusation of witchcraft was a powerful force in bringing people into line with acceptable behavior. Traditionally, the Hopi were a communally oriented society in which support of common values was prized over individual prowess. The person who excelled too much or too often might be suspected of being a witch. Thus, a child who won more races than others would be advised to run more slowly in other races so that others would not feel envy. In a society in which generosity and sharing were valued, the accumulation of too much personal wealth might also lead to suspicion of witchcraft. In this case, a suspect might sponsor a communal festival in which he or she distributed goods to others, an act that eliminated the surplus wealth and curried the favor of others simultaneously. Essentially any deviance was an invitation for suspicious gossip, and this suspicion helped pressure people into conforming behavior, much as the legal system in state societies is intended to do. In many societies, sorcery has also functioned to maintain social order. This is possible because where people believe in the effectiveness of sorcery, the fear of sorcery makes it possible to use threats of sorcery as punishments for 21 behavior that is socially unacceptable to a community. The practice of sorcery by aggrieved individuals against those they feel have wronged them can also give victims the feeling that they have some ability to strike back against wrongdoers. For both reasons, sorcery tends to be more common in societies that do not have other effective means for enforcing the legal rights of individuals. As noted in Chapter 7, Beatrice Whiting (1950) showed that sorcery was most likely to be practiced in societies that lack “individuals or groups of individuals with delegated authority to settle disputes” (p. 90). Yet sorcery is not only employed in dispute resolution; it is also a powerful explanation for misfortune in parts of Africa, Haiti, and elsewhere. For example, Paul Farmer (1992) examined how local narratives of sorcery serve as one (among several) explanation for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Rewards Societies do not rely on punishments alone to maintain social order. Rewarding acceptable behavior also encourages conformity. The praise and esteem of other members of the community is one such reward. Promotions and salary increases provide incentives to support corporate goals. Similarly, various forms of public recognition reward contributions to the social group. In addition to money, honor, and respect, people may be rewarded with greater power within the military, police, or judicial system. Gossip and Social Pressure As Max Gluckman pointed out, tensions between individuals or groups “are built into the larger social order through cultural techniques of gossip and scandal” (1963, 313). Most people value the esteem of others, so gossip and community pressure can be a powerful force in keeping people in line. The key to the effectiveness of gossip is that word eventually gets back to the person being criticized. The nonconformist then has the opportunity to try to regain the respect of others by changing the behavior that others have found unacceptable. Direct confrontation is another form of community pressure that is sometimes resorted to when gossip has failed. Yet anthropologists have also emphasized that gossip is not always functional; it is also a way in which people explain and experience their social world (White, 2000). Law Police in riot gear and holding wooden batons walk together in a small town. iStockphoto/Thinkstock Modern state societies have a monopoly on the use of legal force to protect and control their populations. Order is also maintained through law, the cultural rules that regulate behavior through the threat of punishment (Hoebel, 1954). Legal rules are rules of society that are formally defined and codified into a recognized body of laws. Pospisil (1972) has demonstrated that law in all societies has four characteristics: legal authority, universal application, legal rights and duties, and sanction. Legal authority is the right to compel others to obey the law by the use of force, by the threat of force, or by punishment. All societies that have a formal system of laws vest legal authority in one or more individuals who are charged with the responsibility of maintaining order. They may be political specialists, heads 22 of voluntary associations, designated members of a community, or heads of families. Universal application is the principle that the legal authority should apply the same laws uniformly in similar situations. It is this expectation of consistency that invests legal systems with tradition. Of course, legal authorities may violate this principle, but the inconsistent application of law, or favoritism, is regarded as an abuse of power in all societies. Legal rights and duties are the formal rules that define relationships between persons by specifying what recompense an injured person is entitled to receive and that legal authorities are expected to follow in enforcing contracts between persons when one or both believe their rights have been violated. Finally, sanction is the action taken by legal authorities when the law has been violated. Sanctions may be negative or positive. Negative sanctions are punishments and the loss of privileges or benefit to which a person was entitled before breaking a law. They may include such things as ridicule, ostracism, corporal punishment, or fines. Positive sanctions are rewards for supporting the social order that is defined by law. They include such things as monetary rewards for providing the government with information about law violations, reduced penalties for previous violations of law based on later “good behavior,” and the reduction of charges in return for providing evidence against someone else who is accused of violating the law. 8.5 Conflict and Conflict Resolution Individuals have diverse goals and are not always in agreement with one another about their interaction with one another or about the interaction of the groups they belong to. All societies have developed ways of attempting to minimize or work through conflicts when they arise. Antagonistic parties may sometimes resolve their conflict on their own, if both decide that it is no longer in their best interest to continue their conflict or that their losses have been restored. Peaceful conflict resolution may rely heavily on the goodwill of those involved, whereas violent resolution may be based on the socially accepted use of force by legal authorities. Between these two extremes are various mechanisms of social control, such as the police and court systems in which controlled force or the threat of the use of force is involved in conflict resolution. In this section, we will explore a variety of social mechanisms for the resolution of conflict. Negotiation and Adjudication Peaceful resolution of conflict requires communication between the parties involved. Negotiation, the attempt of parties involved in a conflict to resolve disputes by discussing their disagreements, can be carried out by the disputing parties themselves, but it is often accomplished through mediation, which is negotiation carried out by a go-between. Mediation is generally easier than direct negotiation between parties, provided that the mediator is neutral. A mediator has no authority to enforce a decision on those involved in a conflict. Instead, as he draws on the desire of the parties involved to avoid a continuation or escalation of their dispute, he also relies on his own prestige and his ability to mobilize community pressure to influence the parties to settle. Among the Nuer people of Sudan and Ethiopia, the person holding the prestigious 23 status known as leopard skin chief had no official authority over others but had ritual responsibilities and served as a mediator between families that were in dispute. The position of leopard skin chief was held only by a much-respected male whose home could be a sanctuary to which a murderer might flee for safety while a conflict was being resolved. He performed a ritual purification of the murderer and then approached the family of the murderer to determine the number of cattle that they were willing to pay to the family of the deceased. Then he visited the aggrieved family to see if they would accept the offer. If the immediate relatives pressed for retaliation, the leopard skin chief might seek the support of more distant relatives to encourage them to accept a settlement. Usually a settlement of about 40 cattle was accepted. Since an unrecompensed death could lead to a feud between the families, the role of mediator was important in maintaining social order. Nuer leopard skin chiefs were effective because they were respected and because they were not members of either of the lineages involved in the disputes that they mediated. Community Action Community action is another approach to conflict resolution. In this case, the entire community can be mobilized to respond to and resolve the conflict in societies that lack complex kinship organizations and that are small enough to have a vested interest in resolving the conflict among all members of the local group. Religious Institutions According to Black (1976), when governmental agencies of law enforcement are weak, other means of social control are likely to be more important. As he puts it, “Law varies inversely with other social control” (p. 6). Religion is one of the more prominent social institutions that play a role in social control. The most well-known examples of religious mechanisms for conflict resolution in a legal setting are oaths and ordeals. Oaths are ritual acts of swearing innocence on pain of punishment by deities. Where religious belief is strongly held by people, oaths can be a powerful force in determining guilt, as the guilty may fear supernatural retaliation too strongly to take a false oath. Ordeals are tests of guilt or innocence in which parties in a conflict are challenged to undertake a dangerous or painful act with the understanding that supernatural influences will grant them success only if they are innocent. Again, the guilty are likely to refuse such tests or fail them because their religious convictions undermine their confidence. For instance, the Philippine Ifugao people tested the innocence of persons accused of criminal acts by requiring them to reach quickly into a pot of boiling water and remove pebbles from the bottom. The arm of the person who underwent the ordeal was smeared with grease so that if he acted quickly enough, his arm would not be burned. Those who acted out of a confidence born of innocence were more likely to pass this test than were those whose guilt made them hesitate. Similar tests were reported in medieval Europe and for the Tanala of Madagascar, and in these cases, the arms of the accused were unprotected from the boiling water by grease. However, a period of several days was allowed to pass before the arms were examined; this lapse of time presumably favored the innocent who acted with less hesitation than the guilty, as those with less severe scalds were more likely to have healed by then. Courts A female attorney speaks 24 with a judge as her client stands beside her wearing an orange jail uniform. iStockphoto/Thinkstock State societies often utilize a formal court system to solve disputes between individuals or between the state and individuals. In societies that have economies that can support judicial specialists, adjudication may become more common than mediation. Adjudication involves the use of a third party, such as a judge or arbitrator, who is deemed neutral and who has authority to make a final decision that is binding on both parties to a conflict. In societies that have the resources to do so, a formal system of courts carries out the responsibility of adjudication of the legal issues involved in conflicts and in the violation of laws. A court is a formalized institution that asserts authority over parties in a dispute and over persons accused of violating the law. A court has power to decide cases and impose sanctions. Courts are part of political systems in which governing authorities have the right to exercise control over persons outside their own kinship group, so true courts are found only in chiefdoms and states, societies with centralized political officials. Compensation Whether dealt with by negotiation, mediation, community action, religious institutions, or courts, an injury cannot always be made right. One alternative in such cases is that compensation may be accepted because the payment symbolizes an admission of responsibility by the wrongdoer and allows the injured party to withdraw from the conflict honorably. For instance, the concept of compensation has been applied in many societies, even for major acts such as murder. It was called wer-gild, or “man-payment,” in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman invasion of 1066. According to Evans-Pritchard (1940), the same idea was practiced by the Nuer of the Sudan in recent times. Among the Nuer, the payment took the form of cattle given by the family of the murderer to the surviving relatives. Civil actions in court in which parties sue for compensation for injuries play a similar role in contemporary state societies. Crime In addition to interpersonal and group conflicts, there is also a form of conflict between government and individuals or groups. Such conflicts are those that involve the violation of laws (formal rules set by government itself). Laws are intended to prevent the violation of those rights of individuals, groups, and the government itself that are recognized as such by government. Laws define the realm of crime, which is harming a person or government or of personal or governmental property. Societies differ in the frequency and likelihood of various kinds of crime and in how they deal with it. People who live in small groups have little opportunity to harm another member of the group while remaining anonymous and profiting by the act. In large societies, crime is more feasible because the perpetrator can remain anonymous. The motivation, however, to violate others’ rights for personal gain is certainly not accepted by everyone in such societies, so population growth alone cannot be the sole cause of greater rates of crime in such societies. Rather, it appears that the individuals most likely to resort to 25 crime in large societies are those who are unable to fulfill the values that a society’s culture encourages. Two related factors that differentiate people in this respect are social class and income. Crime varies in frequency from extremely low levels in societies such as the !Kung San foragers of southern Africa (Lee, 1979, 1984) and the Semai horticulturalists of the Malay Peninsula (Dentan, 1968), where crime has been described as almost nonexistent, to societies such as the Yąnomamö (Chagnon, 1983), in which about 23% of the men of each generation die violently. Nevertheless, people in all societies have some concept of crime and consider some harmful acts to be legitimately punishable. Theft, assault against members of one’s own community, and murder are probably regarded as crimes everywhere. Although theft is typically regarded as wrong, the definition of theft differs from culture to culture. In many societies, personal property may be freely borrowed without asking unless the owner expressly indicates that an item is not to be taken. This is particularly likely in societies in which generous sharing of resources is common. For instance, Goldman (1972) described casual attitude regarding property rights among the Cubeo, a horticultural tribe of the Colombian Amazon Basin: Sisters exchange ornaments and trinkets and men borrow freely from one another with or without permission. They seem to be most free with objects of economic utility, such as a canoe, weapons, implements, and somewhat more possessive with objects of personal adornment. (pp. 75–76) In this context of rather nonchalant attitudes about property rights and borrowing, Goldman recounted an interesting story about borrowing among the Cubeo: A visitor from an upriver sib [kinship group] rose to leave, after having spent most of the day in amiable talk, and in a most casual voice said, “I will take my spear with me.” A young man then went to his quarters and fetched the spear, which the visitor took as he departed. The young man explained that he had been at this man’s house during a drinking party. He saw the spear and admired it and took it home without saying anything about it. Theft to the Cubeo is not a matter of purloining an object. It is entirely a matter of attitude. (p. 76) Societies also differ in the likelihood of theft. For instance, in foraging bands of 50 or 60 people, it would be difficult if not impossible to steal the personal property of another and remain undetected. Furthermore, it is generally advantageous to let others borrow one’s tools rather freely, as the fruits of everyone’s labor will benefit the entire group. Thus, the very motive for theft can be undermined by cultural practices such as the custom, in many hunting and gathering societies, of leaving implements outside the hut when it is permissible for others to use them. Homicide is universally regarded as a criminal act, but cultures vary in what they define as homicide. There is probably no society in which the taking of some 26 human life by someone is considered under all circumstances to be murder. For instance, killing is an accepted part of warfare, and killing to protect someone from being killed is typically accepted in most societies. Nevertheless, the intentional taking of another life without justification, however justification happens to be defined, is considered murder practically everywhere. An interesting exception to this general rule was reported by Jenness (1922), who asserted that among Copper Eskimo men, the likelihood of their killing at least one person was so high that only repeated offenses were considered to be murder. This was an important distinction because murder was a capital offense, and taking the life of everyone who had killed just once would have been impossible. Legal Response to Crime In simply organized societies, the enforcement of legal rights is largely left in the hands of individuals and their families. Where the magnitude of the crime threatens to disrupt the community permanently, corporal punishment, confiscation of property, ostracism, or even death are possible sanctions. Bands and tribes are likely to respond to wrongdoing in ways that are designed to return the group to the balance it had before a law was broken, a concept known as restitution. While restitution can involve benefits given to the wronged party, in many societies, the rebalancing of the conflicting groups was achieved by exacting a penalty against the wrongdoers to eliminate the advantage their wrongful acts had brought them. For instance, Beattie (1964) reported that the Berbers of North Africa expected exact equivalence in revenge for a death: “So if a man in one group kills a woman in another, the object of the injured group will be not to kill the murderer, but to kill a woman on their opponent’s side” (p. 175). This is the same principle of an eye for an eye that was set forth in Hammurabi’s famous code. Law enforcement in complex societies tends toward an emphasis on punishment of the criminal. This is probably because crime in societies with full-time law enforcement officials tends to be viewed as a threat to the legitimacy of the government’s authority. The reaction of the enforcement system in such societies is to eliminate, imprison, or otherwise punish the wrongdoer; punishment typically becomes more important than seeing that restitution is made to the victim. In recent times in the United States and other industrialized countries, efforts have been made to pass various victim compensation laws, but the predominant emphasis in industrialized societies remains punishment; it is still regarded as the victim’s obligation to seek recompense through civil suits. Violent Conflict Conflicts cannot always be ended peacefully. There are a variety of forceful ways in which people attempt to regulate their relationships with one another, including retribution, feuds, raids, and warfare. Retribution In many societies that have no centralized governmental authority for the enforcement of law, the responsibility for the punishment of wrongs is the 27 legitimate authority of the person whose rights have been violated. In such cases, law enforcement is synonymous with retribution, the personal use of force to redress wrongs. Retribution as a legal principle is not the same as anarchy because it is legitimate in societies that condone it only when other members of the community recognize that the aggrieved party has a valid complaint that deserves redressing. Crime, anarchy, and other uses of power that are not condoned by the larger community will be seen as illegitimate and punishable. Feuds Armed conflicts between two kinship groups that are initiated by one of the groups to avenge a wrong are called feuds. The most common cause of feuds is the murder of a member of one of the groups. Feuds may occur between kinship groups that reside in the same community, as well as between neighboring groups from different communities. They are most common in societies in which bodies of related males, called fraternal groups, work together and feel obliged to protect one another’s common interests. Raids Organized violence by one group against another to achieve an economic benefit is called a raid. Raiding is generally a more recurrent and ongoing process than feuding, as the latter is stimulated by a specific grievance and may eventually be settled. The economic advantage gained in raiding is likely to be a continuing motivation for this organized violence. Its goal is not to eliminate or even subjugate the enemy permanently but rather to accomplish a limited objective such as the acquisition of food, cattle, or other valued goods. Where raiding is common, the enemy is likely to be treated as a resource that must be left available for future exploitation. War Tribal men in New Guinea sit behind a shield topped with decorated skulls. John Scofield/National Geographic Stock In addition to its use in solving disputes, warfare is used for revenge and serves as an apparatus for male status. Trophy taking is just one of many status mechanisms associated with warfare. The most extensive form of organized violence is war, armed combat between political communities. The nature of war differs according to the complexity of the societies involved. For instance, warfare is least common in those band societies in which individual, communal, or plant-focused foraging is the basis of subsistence. In fact, some have argued that warfare is generally nonexistent among foraging societies that have low resource density and low population density due, in part, to the social emphasis on cooperation. Moreover, among foraging groups, when the frequency of exogamous marriages (marriages between groups, rather than within groups) exceeds 60%, there tends to be less warfare (Kelly, 2000). Warfare is, however, more common in bands with animal-focused foraging. And it is most common in food-producing societies. Otterbein (1970) examined cross-cultural data of 50 societies and found that those with more centrally organized political institutions had more complex military organizations, more effective weapons and tactics, and greater mortality 28 in their engagements than societies with little or no political centralization. In general, warfare was less complex among bands and tribes than among chiefdoms and states. For instance, the former societies lacked professional soldiers, which were typical in the latter. The tactic of surprise was more characteristic of simpler societies, while warfare was more formally arranged and conducted in complex societies. Otterbein found that the purposes of warfare also differed for the two groups. In bands and tribes, those fighting in wars were individually motivated to participate because of personal grudges. So battles tended to consist of many simultaneous fights between individuals with little group strategy. Defense of one’s own village and the benefits of plunder were the motives for war in bands and tribal societies. Of course, more complex societies fought wars for these reasons as well, but they were also influenced by motives less characteristic of warfare in bands and tribes. Enhancing one’s own and one’s family’s prestige was an especially common motivation in chiefdoms, in which competition for prestige is a prominent characteristic. On the other hand, prestige is a less common motive in states where social ranking was more stable and was based on a person’s membership in a particular social class. While warfare carried out to achieve economic and political control over other communities was a motive found in some of the more complex chiefdoms, it was especially characteristic of states. In addition to these points noted by Otterbein, societies that have a form of centralized political organization can also compel individuals through draft to participate in warfare whether they desire to or not. War and Gender Otterbein (1970) also distinguishes between internal warfare, in which the combat is between neighboring political communities that share the same culture, and external warfare, in which the conflict is between political communities with different cultures. Internal warfare is especially common among foraging bands and horticultural tribes, while external warfare is more commonly practiced by more complex chiefdoms and state societies. According to Divale and Harris (1976), internal warfare is particularly associated with the systematic subordination of women. Harris (1974) has summarized the impact of this form of warfare on male and female roles: Male supremacy is a case of “positive feedback,” or what has been called “deviation amplification”—the kind of process that leads to the head-splitting squeaks of public-address systems that pick up and then reamplify their own signals. The fiercer the males, the greater the amount of warfare, the more such males are needed. Also, the fiercer the males, the more sexually aggressive they become, the more exploited are the females, and the higher the incidence of polygyny—control over several wives by one man. Polygyny in turn intensifies the shortage of women, raises the level of frustration among the junior males, and increases the motivation for going to war. The amplification builds to an excruciating climax; females are held in contempt and killed in infancy, making it necessary for men to go to war to capture wives in order to rear additional numbers of aggressive males. (p. 87) 29 As female children are often unwanted in these societies because they lack social power but still need to be fed, Divale and Harris contend that female infanticide, the killing of female offspring, has been the major means of population control in most societies throughout human history. Divale (1972) studied foraging and horticultural societies that practiced warfare and found that the ratio of boys to girls aged 14 and under was 128 to 100. Throughout the world about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls; the extra 23 boys per 100 girls in Divale’s sample indicates a higher death rate among girls in these societies. The female subordination that occurs with internal warfare does not accompany external warfare, in which men are absent from home for prolonged periods while fighting with distant enemies. Women in these societies are likely to be ranked high, as they are the ones who make the day-to-day economic and internal political decisions of the village while the men are away. In such societies, the gardens and houses are often the property of women, female infanticide and polygyny are likely to be uncommon, and inheritance is usually through the line of female ancestry. The power of men over their wives is minimized by their lack of ownership over their wives’ home and gardens as well as their lack of authority over their wives’ children, who are members of their mothers’ families, not their fathers’. The male head of the household is not a woman’s husband but her brother, who belongs to her own family. In these societies women often have great influence on the political decisions that lead to war and that influence its conduct. Their economic roles are also an important source of power. For instance, Iroquois women in the late 18th century were able to control men’s wartime activities by withholding the food used to provision long wartime expeditions. Causes of War There are diverse theories about the cause of warfare. Ember (1982) examined cross-cultural data and found that scarcity of resources such as food and fuel was one predictor of the frequency of warfare. Vayda (1976) pointed out that slashand-burn horticulture stimulates internal warfare in many societies because taking land that has already been worked by neighboring groups may be easier than clearing new land and preparing it for cultivation. Warfare allows horticulturalists to expand geographically when population growth overtaxes local abilities to produce enough food. Divale and Harris (1976) suggested that internal warfare is part of a system that helps to limit population growth because warfare fosters male dominance, subjugation of women, a preference for male offspring, and therefore high rates of female infanticide, which has a major impact on population growth. Naroll (1966) examined possible causes of the frequency of warfare. He determined that a high degree of military sophistication was not associated with lower frequencies of war. In fact, societies with a sophisticated military force were not only more aggressive than militarily less organized societies, but they were more likely to be attacked as well. Beyond food scarcity, population issues, and military capacities, there are other social explanations for the frequency of warfare, such as forms of marriage, competition over resources, and settlement 30 patterns (Kelly, 2000). Rebellion and Revolution The most dramatic forms of internal conflict are rebellion and revolution. Rebellion is an organized and violent opposition to the legitimacy of a society’s current governing body. It is most likely to occur when a significant number of those who are subject to the government’s authority feel themselves to be disenfranchised or inadequately represented by their leaders. Rebellion seeks to influence the policies of government and how they are carried out, but it does not attempt to change the nature of the governmental system itself. Revolution is the organized use of force to alter the very form of government. It is fostered by the same conditions that lead to rebellion, but it is likely to occur when those involved view the very system of government as the source of its illegitimate policy and practices. Both rebellion and revolution have much in common with warfare, as all three represent conflicts, often violent ones, between at least two groups, each of which asserts the legitimacy of its own right to use force for its own political ends. Arab Spring and Social Media Politics are never limited to state-level organization and practices; rather, laypeople are key to political participation and transformation. This becomes evident during times of turmoil, when people rise up against their governments. Such uprisings increasingly employ social media (such as Facebook and Twitter, but also television and video) to rally support for their political causes and broadcast their grievances to fellow citizens and to the world. For example, the media played an integral role in the “Arab Spring”: the wave of protests that swept the Arab world—Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Lebanon, among others—beginning in December 2010. The movement was spurred by popular dissatisfaction with local governments, political corruption, and human rights violations, as well as economic issues (such as rising unemployment and poverty). In some cases, the protests resulted in rulers being forced to resign; in other cases, they resulted in civil wars. Along with strikes, mass demonstrations, and rallies, the movement is notable for its effective use of social media to organize protest efforts, create feelings of community, and communicate local concerns. In fact, there is an ongoing debate about whether social media was the cause of the movement or simply a tool used in it. Some believe that social media facilitated the spread of democratic ideas from abroad, spurring popular discontent with government officials (Howard, et al. 2011). Regardless of whether it was the cause or a tool, social media was prominent within the movement. For example, 9 out of 10 Egyptians reported using Facebook to organize protests and raise social awareness (Huang, 2011). Further, the number of Facebook users...
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