Radcliffe-Brown: over-generalizes the function of political activity and overemphasizes the role of coercive sanctions:

Transcription

1 Week 3: Facing Politics and Power in Anthropology, Part 2 Required Readings: Ch. 9 [Vincent reader] Marc Swartz, Victor Turner, Arthur Tuden, Political Anthropology, Ch. 19 [Vincent reader] Eric Wolf, Facing Power Old Insights, New Questions, References, Additional Sources: Fortes, M, & Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (Eds.) (1940). African Political Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press Easton, David. (1959) Political Anthropology. Biennial Review of Anthropology, 1, pp Southall, Aidan. (1969). Orientations in Political Anthropology. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, 3(1), pp Cohen, Abner. (1969). Political Anthropology: The Analysis of the Symbolism of Power Relations, Man, New Series, 4(2), pp Cohen, Ronald. (1969). Research Directions in Political Anthropology. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, 3(1), pp Radcliffe-Brown: over-generalizes the function of political activity and overemphasizes the role of coercive sanctions: Preface to African Political Systems: the political organization of a society is that aspect of the total organization which is concerned with the control and regulation of the use of physical force (p. xxiii) in studying political organization, we have to deal with the maintenance or establishment of social order, within a territorial framework, by the organized exercise of 1

2 coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of the use of physical force (p. xiv). Gluckman: politics concerns problems of preserving law and order, of assuring public control Assumption: a political system must have positive consequences for a society: must contribute to the maintenance of social order. Radcliffe-Brown: political activity is the organized exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of the use of physical force. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard: in a stateless system there is no specific governmental or authority structure or other form of organization for the implementation of sanctions Influence of Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber Easton: It is clear to us today that the selection of organization and force as criteria was a product of the culturally significant problems generated during the many centuries in Western civilization when political units were engaged in extending the territorial authority of their centralized governments and in developing their national solidarity. The establishment of national political units depended on the assertion of maximum control over a territory and its people by virtue of the capacity to provide law and order, which is identified as sovereignty. Sovereignty in turn was associated with the maintenance of 2

3 government organized to provide stability of control, and with the ability to enforce decisions through the claim to a monopoly of the legitimate use of force, to use the familiar Weberian phrase. It is ironic that anthropology, which has been optimally situated because of the breadth of its interests, should be so tardy in transcending the ethnocentric limits of past political conceptualization. Schapera: organized force is only one of the mechanisms making for orderly life in any community, and to adopt it as the distinctive criterion of political organization would mean neglecting unduly the various others that help to unite people into self-governing groups African Political Systems: presence or absence of an administrative structure, government When a society possesses a governmental structure, we have a class of political systems to which they give the name states; when such a structure does not exist, we have a residual category called stateless societies (Easton) M.G. Smith in stateless societies with corporate lineages where there are no allembracing structures of authority, hierarchies of authority do exist, at least within the lineages themselves (Easton) Smith: government consists of those actions or aspects of behavior by which the public affairs of a people or any social group are directed and managed 3

4 Smith: Authority is the assertion of a right to undertake an activity and presumably the acknowledgment of this right by others in the society. Power in a political system is oriented to shaping and influencing policy; competition among individuals for this power Power cannot be hierarchical, one it is, it becomes authority Political action is a subset of social action, directly related to formulating and executing binding decisions Smith s politics : binding decisions, governmental process, authority, administration, influence, competition Easton: binding decisions require these activities in order to be put into effect: (1) the formulation of demands (2) legislation (3) administration (4) adjudication (5) the marshaling of support or solidarity Ch. 9 [Vincent reader] Marc Swartz, Victor Turner, Arthur Tuden, Political 4

5 Anthropology, How had political anthropology changed between the 1940s and the mid-1960s and how was this change reflected in the analytical vocabulary? [dynamic, process, becoming, conflict resolution, faction, struggle, arena] What was Gluckman s contribution? [extended case method] What does the processual dimension of politics seem to refer to? What are the key qualities of a process that are used to define it as political in the view of these authors? public goals (public goals) achievement of a new relationship competition for resources allocation of resources power consciousness field/arena 5

6 p. 107: The study of politics, then, is the study of the processes involved in determining and implementing public goals and in the differential achievement and use of power by the members of the group concerned with those goals SOUTHALL: The subject of study is 'politics' and an ambitious but rather nebulous new definition of it is attempted, the most concise formulation being that it is "the processes involved in determining and implementing public goals and in the differential achievement and use of power by the members of the group concerned with those goals."' Although 'group' thus enters into the definition, we are told that attention must be centered on processes, "rather than on the groups or fields within which they occur."' Yet, the "unit of space is no longer the isolated 'society'; it tends to be the political 'field". Thus field which is rejected in one paragraph is made fundamental in the next. The unit of time "is no longer 'structural time'; it is historical time" and "the combined unit is a spatial temporal continuum." Thirty pages later the unit of political action is a "political phase development." This vacillation and terminological incertitude must indicate some lack of thorough thinking through, yet it is held up as a "breach from earlier analytical norms." Ch. 19 [Vincent reader] Eric Wolf, Facing Power Old Insights, New Questions,

7 What are Wolf s four modes of power, and which one in particular does he seem to emphasize? [power as the attribute of the person; interactions and transactions; control over the settings/tactical or organizational power; structural power, political economy, governance] Why should we need to specify different kinds of power? Do you think the discussion of power is deepened or extended by this specification? How is the control of labour and capital political and not economic? Organization and signification: why are these important foci for Wolf? How does he think they should be understood? 7