Service’s fourfold typography of political systems: Bands

Anthropology at UWC Costa Rica

Sociopolitical Typology developed by Service

Economic Type Sociopolitical Type

Foragers Band

Horticulturalists and Pastoralists

Tribe

Farming and Herding

Chiefdom

Agricultural Base Non-Industrial State

Industrial Base Industrial State

These types (e.g Band, Tribe etc.) are correlated with the adaptive strategies(economic typology)

Foraging Bands

• Modern hunter-gather societies are remnants of foraging band societies

• Key difference: strong ties they maintain with sociopolitical groups outside the band make them markedly different from Stone Age hunter-gatherers

• Modern foragers live in interlinked world and nation states e.g. Pygmies of E Congo share social world and economic exchanges with cultivating neighbours

Case Study: Basarwa San (Botswana)

• The Basarwa San are an example of foraging bands whose lives have been impacted significantly by outside groups.

• Basarwa San are affected by policies of the government of Botswana, which relocated them after converting their ancestral lands into a wildlife reserve (Motseta 2006).

• The government of Botswana is not the first to implement policies and systems that affect the Basarwa San.

• San speakers (“Bushmen”) of southern Africa have been influenced by Bantu speakers (farmers and herders) for 2,000 years and by Europeans for centuries.

Edward Wilmsen 1989

• Many San descend from herders who were pushed into the desert by poverty or oppression.

• San today are a rural underclass in a larger political and economic system dominated by Europeans and Bantu food producers.

• As a result of this system, many San now tend cattle for wealthier Bantu rather than foraging independently. They also have domesticated animals, indicating their movement away from their foraging lifestyle.

Susan Kent (1992, 1996)

• Tendency to stereotype foragers, to treat them all as alike.

• They used to be stereotyped as isolated, primitive survivors of the Stone Age. A new stereotype sees them as culturally deprived people forced by states, colonialism, or world events into marginal environments.

• Which view is most accurate?• Although latter view often is exaggerated, it

probably is more accurate than the former one.

Variations in time and space

• Kent (1996) stresses variation among foragers, focusing on diversity in time and space among the San. The nature of San life has changed considerably since the 1950s and 1960s (Lee and Harvard School)

• Most important contrasts between settled (sedentary) and nomadic groups (Kent and Vierich 1989). Although sedentism has increased substantially in recent years, some San groups (along rivers) have been sedentary for generations.

• Others, including the Dobe Ju/’hoansi San (Lee 1984, 2003) and the Kutse San (Kent 1996), retain more of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Contemporary and recent hunter-gatherers like the San illustrate links between foraging economy and other aspects

of band society and culture

• San groups that still are mobile emphasize social, political and gender equality (traditional band characteristics)

• A social system based on kinship, reciprocity, and sharing is appropriate for an economy with few people and limited resources.

• The nomadic pursuit of wild plants and animals discourages permanent settlement, wealth accumulation, and status distinctions. (Families and bands have been adaptive social units e.g people have to share meat when they get it otherwise it rots)

Conflict resolution in stateless societies: Case Study - Inuit

• All societies have ways of settling disputes (of variable effectiveness) along with cultural rules or norms about proper and improper behavior.

• Norms are cultural standards or guidelines that enable individuals to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a given society.

• While rules and norms are cultural universals, only state societies, those with established governments, have formal laws that are formulated, proclaimed, and enforced.

Hoebel (1954): Conflict Resolution amongst the Inuit

• Sparse population of some 20,000 Inuit spanned 6,000 miles (9,500 kilometers) of the Arctic region.

• The most significant social groups were the nuclear family and the band.

• Personal relationships linked the families and bands. Some bands had headmen and/or shamans

• These positions conferred little power on those who occupied them.

Role of gender in conflict• Hunting and fishing by men were the primary subsistence

activities.• The diverse and abundant plant foods available in warmer

areas, where female labor in gathering is important, were absent in the Arctic.

• Traveling on land and sea in a bitter environment, Inuit men faced more dangers than women did.

• The traditional male role took its toll in lives, so that adult women outnumbered men.

• This permitted some men to have two or three wives. Ability to support more than one wife conferred a certain amount of prestige, but it also encouraged envy.

• If a man seemed to be taking additional wives just to enhance his reputation, a rival was likely to steal one of them. Most disputes were between men and originated over women, caused by wife stealing or adultery.

What could a jilted husband do?

• He could try to kill the wife stealer. • However, if he succeeded, one of

his rival’s kinsmen would try to kill him in retaliation.

• One dispute could escalate into several deaths as relatives avenged a succession of murders.

• No government existed to intervene and stop a blood feud

A better alternative…

• Could challenge a rival to a song battle. In a public setting, contestants made up insulting songs about each other.

• At the end of the match, the audience proclaimed the winner.

• However, if a man whose wife had been stolen won, there was no guarantee she would return (often she stayed with her abductor)

The problem of theft

• Thefts are common in societies with marked property differentials, but thefts are uncommon among foragers.

• Each Inuit had access to the resources needed to sustain life. Every man could hunt, fish, and make the tools necessary for subsistence.

• Every woman could obtain the materials needed to make clothing, prepare food, and do domestic work. Inuit men could even hunt and fish in the territories of other local groups.

• There was no notion of private ownership of territory or animals.