Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Chapter 7

Political organization

The patterned ways in which power and authority are distributed among groups and individuals in a society.

Political process

How individuals and groups organize to use power and to achieve public goals

Power

The ability to control resources in one's own interest

Authority

The ability to cause others to act based on characteristics such as honor, status, knowledge, ability, respect, and the holding of formal public office

Political ideology

The shared values and beliefs that legitimize the distribution and use of power in a particular society.

Law

The systematic application of force by a constituted authority in society

Leadership

the ability to direct an enterprise or action

egalitarian societies

individual differences in skills and personality qualities are recognized but no

individual or group is denied the right to a livelihood or is subject to the control of others

rank society

a society characterized by institutionalized differences in prestige, but with no

important restrictions on access to basic resources

stratified society

a society characterized by formal, permanent, social, and economic

inequality

band

a small group of people (20 to 50), related by blood or marriage, who live together and are loosely associated with a territory

tribe

a culturally distinct population whose members consider themselves descended from the same ancestor or as part of the same people

mediation

a way of managing disputes that uses the offices of a third party to achieve voluntary agreement between opposing parties

war

formally organized and culturally recognized pattern of collective violence directed toward other societies or conducted between segments within a larger society

chiefdom

an autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a single individual or kin group

state

a hierarchical, centralized form of political organization in which a central government has a legal monopoly over the use of force

government

an interrelated set of status roles that are separate from other aspects of social structure, such as kinship

bureaucracy

administrative hierarchy characterized by specialization of function and fixed rules

hegemony

the dominance of the political elite based on close identification between their own goals and those of the larger society

nation-state

a government and territory that is identified with a (relatively) culturally homogeneous population and a national history

Refugee

a person forced to flee their country because of violence, war, or persecution

Indigenous peoples

Members of small-scale societies that occupied their land before contact with large state societies and whose identities remain separate from most people in the state societies into which they have been incorporated

Mana

In Polynesia mana is a a spiritual power, but the degree to which they had it depended on rank(society)