ANTH 111 - Cultural Anthropology - Topic 9: Political Organization and Social Control
Learn
Practice Test
Spaced Repetition
Match
Flashcards1/63
There's no tags or description
Looks like no tags are added yet.
Name | Mastery | Learn | Test | Matching | Spaced |
|---|
No study sessions yet.
64 Terms
What is a political organization?
The ways in which power in distributed within a society to control people’s behaviors and maintain social order.
What are types of power?
Structural power — way social systems, institutions, and laws shape people’s lives by creating advantages for some groups and disadvantages for others.
Social power — ability to transform a situation that affect an entire social group
Political power — social power held by a group that can affect many lives.
What is authority?
The power or right to give commands, take action and make binding (final) decisions.
How is political power in non state societies?
Leadership = temporary, informal & based on personal attributes rather than rank
Example: Power of an Amazonian headman = based on their personal charisma & persuasiveness.
In other words, less structure —> more leeway
How is political power in in state/chiefdoms societies?
Controlled by officials & hierarchical institutions.
Laws are put in place to determine who may hold office, for how long & the power wielded in that position.
In other words, more structure —> less leeway
Does every society have a government?
NO.
Some societies have centralized political authority in form of a government. others have lived in acephalous societies.
What is a government?
A separate legal and constitutional domain that is the source of law, order and legitimate force.
What are acephalous societies?
Societies without a governing head, generally no hierarchical leadership.
Who suggested the 4 basic political systems?
Elman Service.
What are the 4 basic political systems?
Bands
Tribes
Chiefdoms
States
What do all these 4 basic political systems share in common?
They are responsible for:
public decision making & leadership
maintaining social order
protecting group rights
ensuring everyone’s safety from external threats
What is sociopolitical typology?
The way groups/societies are organized based on political terms.
What is an example of a band that we have here in Canada?
The Indian Act Band. They manage Indian reserves & First Nation funds and are governed by chief and council.
What systems are in states?
Population control (census & grant rights)
Judiciary (how law is interpreted & applied in society AKA courts & judges)
Enforcement
Fiscal ($) support (taxes)
New forms of political organization above the state (like European Union & the United Nations)
What are types of state societies?
Autocratic state
Representative democracy
Monarchy
Theocracy
What is an autocratic state?
1 leader, all the power.
What is a totalitarian?
When there is direct control over the citizen’s lives.
What is a dictatorship?
One individual = all the power, rises when nation is in crisis.
What is a representative democracy?
Where the power rests with the citizens
Referendum — direct to vote
Suffrage — the right to vote
Constitution — set of laws
What is a monarchy?
Power with individual or family (ascribed)
What is a theocracy?
Ultimate power rests with deity like in Iran or Vatican City.
What is a state?
An autonomous regional structure of political, economic & military rule with a central government authorized to make laws & use force to maintain social order & defend its territory.
Now, most states are polyethnic = many ethnicities living in same state.
What is a nation-state?
A politcal entity, located withina location with enforced borders, where the population shares a sense of culture, ancestry & destiny as a people.
What is citizenship?
Legal membership in a nation-state.
What is a nation?
A term once used to describe a group of people who shared a place of origin —> now used interchangeably with nation-state
What is nationality?
An identification with a group of people thought to share a place of origin.
What is nationalism?
The desire of an ethnic community to create and/or maintain a nation-state.
Who is Benedict Anderson & what did he study?
He is an Irish historian that studied how people came to imagine themselves as members of a large community through the circulation of print media after the invention of the printing press.
What is an imagined community?
The invented sense of connection and shared traditions that underlie with identifying with a particular ethnic group whose members likely will never meet.
What did Eric Hobsbawn & Terence Ranger show?
These historians showed that nations are not ancient configurations, but recent constructions with invented traditions, such as national languages & holidays.
What is globalization?
Reshaping the way nation-state function and are experienced within and beyond their borders.
What is diaspora?
A group of people who live outside their ancestral homeland yet maintain emotional and material ties to home.
What did Victoria Bernal explore in her book Nation as Network (2014)?
She explores how members of the Eritrean diaspora engage online in the remaking of the Eritrean state, citizenship & identity.
What is social control?
The mechanisms found in all societies that function to encourage people to maintain social norms. All cultures have some form of social control that vary in formality.
How are systems of social control in small scale societies?
Social control = less formal & more likely to be based only on norms
Problems are handled privately
Groups may punish an individual with shaming, ridicule or ostracism
Restoring order > punishment
Punishment = legitimized through belief in supernatural forces
Capital punishment = extremely rare
How are systems of social control in large scale societies?
Norms & laws regulate daily life
Punishment for violating laws = serious and can lead to death
What are social norms?
A generally agreed-upon standard for how people should behave, usually unwritten and learned unconsciously.
What are sanctions?
Any means used to enforce compliance with the rules & norms of a society.
Positive sanctions = enforce through rewards
Negative sanctions = punishments
Can be informal or formal, depending on if laws are being broken.
What are mechanisms of social control?
Public opinion
Supernatural belief system
Oaths & ordeals
Corporate lineages
Intermediaries
Age organizations
Social media shaming
Courts & codified laws
What is an oath?
The declare to a god to attest the truth of what a person says.
What is an ordeal?
A painful and possible life-threatening test inflicted on someone suspected of wrongdoing to determine if they’re guilty or innocent.
What are corporate lineages?
Kinship groups whose members engage in daily activities together.
What are intermediaries?
Mediators of disputes among individuals or families within a society.
What are age organizations?
People of same age pass through life together, each level has increased social status & defined roles.
What is social media shaming?
Public online humiliation that can lead to vigilantism (taking the law into one’s own hands according to their ideas of justice).
What is crime?
Harm to a person or property that society considers illegitimate.
What is law?
Codified (organized) rules enforced through the legitimate use of physical coercion (force).
What are 3 important factors in state systems of social control?
Specialization of Riles
Trials & Courts (ensure justice, but biases can get in the way of that)
Power-enforced forms of punishments (prisons)
What is justice?
Doing what is right in the context of a legal system.
What are 2 types of justice?
Retributive justice — focus on punishing for wrongdoing
Restorative justice — focus on repairing harm by reconciling
Can society exist with no conflict?
No. Conflict is inevitable, violence is not.
What is violence?
The use of force to harm someone or something. Culture shapes what people consider “legitimate” violence and ways and reasons they use it.
What is ethnic conflict?
Dispute between two or more ethnic groups.
What are the 2 kinds of ethnic conflict?
Genocide — murder of population of certain ethnicity, race or religion
Ethnocide — destroying the culture of a distinct group
What is sectarian conflict?
Based on perceived differences between divisions or sects within a religion.
What is war?
Organized group action directed against another group and involves lethal force (death).
What do political anthropologists explore?
they explore the cultural processes through which war is invented, learned and enacted (put into action). They study how warfare is constructed as a reasonable means for resolving conflicts.
What is militarization?
The contested social process through which a civil society organizes for the production of military violence.
What did Catherine Lutz describe in Homefront (2001)?
She describes how the process of militarization includes not only the production of weaponry, but also the glorification of war.
What is domination?
Coercive (use force) rule, expensive & unstable.
What is hegemony?
System of leadership in which rulers persuade subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by offering mutual accommodations that preserve the ruler’s privileged position.
What is legitimacy?
Right of political leaders to obtain and use their power, linked to a culture values and ideology and can be lost.
What is rebellion?
An attempt within a society to disrupt the status quo and redistribute the power and resources.
What is revolution?
An attempt to overthrow the existing form of political organization, the principles of economic production and distribution and the allocation of social status.