The Anthropologie Politique studies the forms Politique S of different the Peuple S from the world, considering that they are related to the structures of the Civil society.

General information

The political word has as a direction: who refers to the city (polished , the city in Greek). The city is the whole of the organized citizens following of the laws. This organization is a politeion, word which one can translate by constitution (cf Aristote, Policies). According to Aristote, it is the membership of this constitution, largely independent of the material conditions, which makes the citizen and gives birth to in the individual the feeling to take part in a collectively managed group. The study of this reality is one of the parts of the Anthropologie.

We will follow Balandier (see bibliography) to characterize this part: according to him, the political anthropology “tends to found a science of the policy, considering the man in the form of the homo politicus and seeking the properties common to all the political organizations recognized in their historical and geographical diversity. ”

It is thus a question of studying the government of the men and its institutions, the varieties of modes in their organization and their development, and the speeches and notations symbolic which allow or endeavor to legitimate them. It is obviously an immense task, which took besides a true importance in the medium of the anthropologists only in the Sixties. We will present as much as possible the general executives of this discipline, by pressing us on various authors (see bibliography), without claiming to be able to be exhaustive.

Types of organizations

Capacity in the relationship

For a general talk of the organization of the relationship, to see Relationship.

Political structures

We do not know a company without an organization, even minimal, capacity, and all the companies are heterogeneous. This heterogeneity distributes the individuals according to variable functions which depend themselves on their place in the group. At Aristote (Ethical with Nicomaque, delivers I), the whole of the human roles are subordinated to higher purposes: the breeding of the horses to the art of the war, and the art of the war to the policy. Just as the Philosophie orders the thought (Metaphysical, delivers A), the policy orders and unifies the company of the men.

The fundamental concepts of the political anthropology are thus about the following: company, capacity, policy, Hierarchy, social inequalities, etc We will see that the most homogeneous companies seemingly are all the same treated on a hierarchical basis and define inequalities.

What is the subject especially of controversies, it is the question of knowing if these inequalities are entirely natural or if the culture defines very variable functions of one company in the other, starting from natural inequalities which are not nevertheless founders and who would owe of this rather called fact being differences (like the differences men \ women for example). This question will be tackled further.

We will start by describing in their general information some examples of political organizations. Thereafter, we will reconsider more in detail the social hierarchies subjacent with these organizations.

Companies without differentiated hierarchy

In this type of company, where the differences in the social hierarchy are weak, the capacity does not have a centralized structure or visible institutions charged to maintain the order. A certain authority is however entrusted to the household heads, to a council the old ones, or expert people in crowned realities. It is morals and the religion which are used to sanction the violation of prohibited and the individuals is sometimes excluded, when they threaten to take a too great importance within the group.

These companies live of hunting, gathering, fishing, etc by small groups of a few tens of individuals.

According to Laburthe-Tolra, this kind of company meets in forest zones, mountainous and desert “where it is difficult to carry out political units beyond the village”; and following the decomposition of great political units, which refutes the idea of an evolution necessary of the companies towards official systems.

The book of Evans Pritchard, Nuers (1940) studies one of these companies known as " without état". Nuers, tribe of the south of Sudan, live primarily of their cattle and use only rudimentary techniques. They move according to the seasons and the movements of their cattle and are constituted thus in more or less important groups according to the needs for the animals: dispersed of small number along the rivers during the dry season and gathered in village during the rain season. It is said that Nuer are made up in a " anarchy ordonnée" where the conflict situations are numerous. To decide between the litigations (flight with the crime of blood while passing by the taking of hostage - men or cattle), " the man with skin of léopard" occupy a place of mediator. Without holding a true capacity of coercion, it is called to slice certain situations. It is the only one to hold a particular position within the group, even if it does not decide moments when it can intervene. The Nuer company functions by segments chalk-linings, the relationship being the only form of " hiérarchie" remarkable of this group.

“Big Man”

The company with Big Man is a company which gathers between 100 and 1000 people. This type of company knows a territorial dimension, delimitations of borders. They are hunters, storage, semi-sedentaries. These companies have autonomous political institutions and legal, able to adapt to various situations. This jurisdictional body is not modern and is primarily based on the chief. Lastly, these companies with Big man, are made up of sub-groups. One them meetings primarily in the North-East of North America, in California, in Guyana, in Nigeria, in New Guinea and Mélanésie.

Companies with chefferies

Official systems

To be able and company

We already on the occasion to stress that all the known companies comprise hierarchies, structures of being able, even if they are not always immediately visible for an external observer (of another culture). These hierarchies are obviously very variable. It will now be a question of exposing the relations between social structures and forms of being able.

Let us distinguish initially:

• the hierarchies themselves, as them distinguish from the social groups as inferiors and superiors following of the criteria such as the richness, the capacity and prestige (cf max Weber).
• symbolic system of the hierarchies: for example, the word hierarchy means order crowned , which implies (at least in our language) that the authority or the principles of scheduling of a company would be at the bottom of religious origin. By this origin, the inequalities can be perceived like legitimate. The latter point should never be forgotten, even if it goes against our own values, because it would be us to prohibit the comprehension of certain cultural and political dimensions of the hierarchies.

From there, we can wonder:

• on which natural differences a culture does it rest to produce social inequalities? is
• which the types of legitimation of these organizations of the company?

We will not answer these questions in turn, but we will endeavor to distinguish the great social categories and policies which correspond to it.

Inequalities in the companies other than human

Since anthropology studies the human one as an animal, it is essential to compare all the known animal companies. Let us stress that such comparisons must remain careful.

The article Chimpanzé gives an example of a not-human animal company comprising a few degrees of hierarchy. The animal hierarchies at the Vertébré S generally meet these three needs:

• research of food: priority of one or several individuals of the company (not necessarily a Male dominating);
• reproduction: for example, a male dominating reserves females; in certain cases (in the lion), the male can kill the small ones that a female had of another male;
• delimitation of a territory: the violation of these delimitations can give place to conflicts between groups (p. e.g. at the Chimpanzé).

These needs thus lead sometimes to confrontations violent one. Hierarchies are made up which produce at the same time meaning reactions; behaviors of domination or tender, etc It should be noticed that the hierarchies observed are never very stable. It is one of the reasons for which one should not exaggerate the resemblance between these hierarchies and the hierarchies human, and to remain careful: he enters the human society of the elements other than the force and which make it possible as much, if it is not effectively any more, to constitute and preserve hierarchies. These elements are especially of order symbolic system.

Differences between the sexes

The natural differences between men and women are too much complex to be analyzed in some paragraphs and the object here only general information will be. They are perhaps at the origin of the distribution of the roles (in particular for work); however these roles are always socially defined, which implies that the female one and the masculine is not biologically defined: it happens that women hold the role of men and conversely. If the whole of the companies is considered, one notes that many activities are sometimes regarded as female, sometimes like male. Certain functions nevertheless are sexuées, for more or less natural reasons: hunting or the breeding is especially ensured by the domestic men, gathering and occupations like weaving by the women. That does not mean however that such a distribution implies necessarily a male domination.

This male domination was essential with the appearance of the patriarchate approximately 7000 years ago and the women will then be regarded as richnesses whose eigenvalue is the childbirth. That perdure largely in the industrial society. This domination undoubtedly is originally founded by the force and the violence physics, then legitimated by the imposition of forms symbolic systems of domination. Since then, in fact the forms symbolic systems of the patriarchal capacity are with work.

The legitimation of this domination is done by the valorization of the male activities and myths where the women are often represented like beings rebellious and tyrannical, from where need for subjecting them to the social order which they threaten by their irascible or fluctuating nature. This design of the woman is largely widespread in graeco-latin antiquity and the company Judeo-Christian: for example, with Rome, the proverb known as: femina is mutabile : the woman is a changing being; in Greece, the proverb known as: the most beautiful ornament of a woman, it is her silence. In certain traditional companies, the “chattering” of the women is supposed being a danger to the balance of the Parole, word which in mythology often has a cosmic value founder (cf " At the beginning was Verbe").

It perhaps is consequently not exaggerated to say that the contempt for the women is a feeling universally shared by the men.

This devalorization is accompanied, according to Marcel Mauss ( Esquisse of a general theory of the magic ), owing to the fact that the women are “raw magicians, dépositrices of capacities, (...) famous qualitatively different from the men and endowed with specific capacities. ” The fear tested by the men with regard to the capacity real or supposed women thus plays a great part in this violence symbolic system. This fear can be a fear of the man vis-a-vis the forces of nature such that they are expressed for example in fruitfulness. The women can then be perceived like nearer to nature and less “civilized” that the men, whereas it is a design symbolic system which imposes this statute to them through male structures of domination. That does not prevent the men from paradoxically designing (in opposition to this value of fruitfulness, positive and fundamental in the relationship) the women like beings malefic: “the woman it is death” ( Maitrayani samhita quoted by Mauss).

We find in this hierarchy symbolic system between men and women a paradigmatic example of structuring of the capacity: physical violence and legitimation by practices and speeches which impose the values of dominating. It is however necessary to avoid conceiving this domination as a simplistic diagram which would oppose oppressors to oppressed (with the masculine, even in our example, because we speak about social roles which can in themselves be asexual). Indeed, an important aspect of a hierarchy, it is that, being essential on all, it also is essential on those which are considered to be lower; those can thus judge themselves according to this hierarchy of the values. Mauss underlines thus that “the company, that of the men, nourishes with regard to the women of strong social feelings that, on their side, they respect and even divide. ” But it would remain to study the rebellions of the women in the traditional companies.

to see production of the Great men, Mr. Godelier, 1996.

Differences between the ages

The various ages of the human being form an initiatory hierarchy. As in the socialization of the sexes, the biological aspects are only one starting point structured and modified by cultural representations. The real age is thus not necessarily the social age. Thus the age groups correspond at a community of initiation where the individuals do not have necessarily the same age.

Initiation consists in becoming ready to fulfill a social function: for example, the young man takes the statute of warrior, becomes father, becomes finally Old; the young girl Marie, becomes mother. These statutes are marked in the industrial society, but exist nevertheless.

In the traditional companies, the old men occupy the highest places of the hierarchy, and play sometimes a part carrying in the payment of the conflicts because of their real or supposed practical wisdom. The capacity of Old can be considerable: this function gives for example the right in certain companies to manage the rites, and the political power of the old men is expressed by councils whose king is only the primus inter pares (example: the royalty with Rome) Thus, the Latin word “Senate” comes from senex , old man, and lord comes from senior ; the Old ones also have a big part of the capacity with Athens, with Sparte (Gérousie). As a whole, the old aristocracies are gérontocraties.

This design should not however too be simplified. For example, if the great age is respected in ancient Greece, one sees in the Iliade which if the councils of the old man Nestor are always listened, they are never followed by the young warriors, which is expressed by the repeated answer: “it is well said, old man, but …” Homère shows the possibility for the existing competitions between age group: young people are impulsive and unwise, and it is necessary that the old men contain them by the force of the right.

On the other hand, in the companies where the innovation is a true cultural value, the great age generally has negative connotations which are also related to the screening of dead and of its ritual.

Crowned like base of the inequalities

Authority of the knowledge and the truth

See Hierarchy

Economy

• Macroeconomics: richness, work, means of production, exchanges,
• Microéconomie: structuring of the companies (see Management)
• Allowance of the resources: to see Theory of the public choices

The State: centralization of the capacity

Hierarchy in the companies of Western Europe

Forms of resistance to the capacity

• women in the traditional companies
• inversions of hierarchy
• exclusion

Random links:

21e Panzerdivision | Rahman Rezaei | Series 4700 | County of Wheeler (Texas) | Georges Loizeau