ANTH1220 Week 8

Power

The ability to influence others, with methods such as coercion and persuasion

Legitimacy

The perception that an individual has a valid right to leadership. May be established through heredity, or appeal to religious or secular authority

Social power

The power of choice over a group

Political power

Formally recognized social power, split into three different types: Visible, formal apparatus of power. Hidden, behind the scenes power. Invisible, norms that make some issues invisible

Structural power

The power to allocate labour

Thomas Hobbes

Described the state of nature as “war of all against all”

Pacific oceania big man complex

A form of leadership prevalent in Melanesian societies in Pacific Oceania, characterized by achieved, rather than inherited, power.

Azande witchcraft

A traditional belief system among the Azande people of North Central Africa that acts as a comprehensive explanation for misfortune, illness, and death. Rather than being a supernatural act with spells or potions, it is viewed as an innate, physical, or psychic power that exists within a person's body

What did Karl Marx say relating to domination and hegemony?

People believe coercion is legitimate. People accept an ideology that justifies coercion and made the concept of false consciousness, being duped by an ideology

What did Antonio Gramsci say relating to domination and hegemony?

Persuasion is more stable that coercion. He also created the terms hegemony, successfully persuading people to accept the legitimacy of your authority, and counterhegemony, the challenges by subordinate groups

Bands

Have no formal leadership, mechanisms to discourage arrogance and competitiveness. There is informal dispute resolution, often involving battles of wits. Larger scale conflict and violence is rare due to the lack of leadership.

Tribes

They have larger populations than bands, they’re egalitarian with no formal leadership. Strategies of social integration include sodalities, gifts and feasting, marriage, segmentary lineages. There are no codified laws, they’re more interesting in resolving conflict than assigning blame. Mediators often try to negotiate settlements such as the leopard skin chief of the Nuer. Unresolved conflict can lead to war like raids and feuds

Chiefdoms

They are ranked societies, less egalitarian, everyone has access to basic resources. Higher ranking people are more distinguished from lower ranking people based on sumptuary rules. The office of chief is permanent and governed by rules of succession. Associated with redistribution. The ranking system is based on kinship. Marriage is used to cut across kin ties and reinforce rank and secret societies create cross-cutting ties that often handle matters related to law and warfare

Stratification/stratified societies

When a society is divided into different mutually exclusive, hierarchical groups. Elites control the strategic resources. An example of one is the Indian caste system.

Why did states form?

Social stratification and increased agricultural productivity were the preconditions for state formation. States form when potential subjects are circumscribed and can’t leave. Subjects of the original states were peasants

What was the first known legal code?

The Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon

Modern nation states/the nation

Did not exist prior to 1400. A group of people with a presumed common identity, language, origin, destiny, religio, ethnicity, etc. They try to create this sense of peoplehood Benedict Anderson refers to as “imagined community”

Michel Foucault

Described how biopower came into being in the 19th century. The science of statistics was born in pursuit of biopolitics

Biopower

The way modern governments control citizens not through fear or force, but by managing their bodies, health and daily lives. It was preoccupied with the bodies of subjects and the body politic was interested in population

Aihwa Ong

Studied the wealthy chinese merchant families and their relationships with the governmentality of the nation-state, market, and their families. Conforming to the governmentality of the market while eluding the governmentality of the nation-state

Fragile state

A government that cannot adequately perform the functions of a state. Not being able to protect citizens, vulnerable to coups, uprising, foreign invasion, civil war, etc.

Failed state

A state that can no longer perform any state functions at all

What is colonialism linked to?

It is linked to the fragility of postcolonial states through a legacy of distorted political and economic systems and the apparatus of repressive, authoritarian states

What is the power of the imagination/interpreting experience?

Everyone has the power to interpret experience, tswana miners question the “scars of bondage” hypothesis. Experience may be less important than how it is interpreted