Chieftainship

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In ethnology - according to Elman Service - chieftainship denotes a form of political organization of settled indigenous peoples and ethnic groups who recognize (or historically recognized) one or more permanently ruling heads. According to Morton Fried , it belongs to the ranking societies .

In political ethnology , the chieftainship is classified between the (partly segmentary and “domination-free” ) tribal societies and the societies organized in states .

In 1981, the American ethnologist Robert L. Carneiro defined chieftainship as "an autonomous political unit consisting of a number of villages or communities and which is under the control of a supreme chief".

In common parlance, the domain of a chief or traditional leader is undifferentiated as the chiefhood.

requirements

In the chiefdoms of the North American west coast, inequality in terms of resources was regularly alleviated by the ritual potlatch festival.

A prerequisite for the emergence of a chieftainship is the emergence of social inequality in segmental tribal societies, in particular:

  • Inequality between women and men : Many of these societies are organized according to their patrilineal line ( patrilinear ) and the marital residence lies with the man or his father ( patrilocal ). Women generally have a lower social status than men here. In particular, the fact that women leave their own families after marriage and live with that of their husbands puts them at a disadvantage in many ways:
    • Your social status is declining; they are cut off from all previous social contacts, for example with friends, and in some cases have to live with people they did not know before.
    • In general, women are not entitled to inheritance and can only benefit to a limited extent from the labor of their descendants .
    • The bonds of kinship are in patriarchal manufactured systems, only about men.
    • Although women occupy a dominant position in agriculture and domestic production, the products of labor are controlled by men.
From the more original exchange of women , bride price systems develop , so that women can in fact be bought by the groom's family in exchange for marriage goods (valuable and permanent objects or possessions).
  • Inequality between younger and older men : Another form of inequality in these societies is the prominent position of the oldest men ( seniority principle ). The elders often have the greatest authority and decide the most important general concerns of production. They coordinate the production process and manage the agricultural supplies. In patriarchal societies they negotiate marriage alliances with the elders of the other communities and determine which members of the respective groups are married to one another.
  • Inequality between successful and less successful men : The members of segmental societies believe that every particularly successful production, for example that of a hunter, fisherman, tiller or warrior, is the result of possessing supernatural powers, which are called mana in the Polynesian language , otherwise known worldwide under different names. The more success ( prestige ) a person has, the more mana they have and the more psychic powers are ascribed to them. Since mana is not evenly distributed among all members of society, but in such a way that it corresponds to the religious, political or economic success of the individual, it causes society to be graded into different status groups, which are defined by their share of mana . The existence of mana leads to a constant battle for recognition among members of the community.

Emergence

Members of the Jingpo people who were brought in by Friedman for the establishment of the chieftainship.

The American anthropologist Jonathan Friedman described the emergence of the chieftainship in 1975 using the example of the Jingpo (Kachin) in Myanmar (Burma), Asia : A chieftainship arises when an individual is at war, for example, but especially by organizing festivals with mutual gifts (example : Potlatchfest ) acquires such a high social reputation ( mana , prestige) that a positive feedback loop is created and a large part of the social work product is ultimately concentrated in its family or ancestry group ( lineage , clan ). Example:

  1. The leader of a clan gives a particularly large festival for the entire village. He can afford it because he had a good harvest.
  2. This festival increases his reputation considerably; now he can demand particularly high bride prices for his daughters .
  3. The additional product acquired through the bride prices is used to acquire additional women.
  4. This increases the reputation of his clan on the one hand, and on the other hand the women and children born by them mean that more workers are available and more goods can be produced for the festivities.
  5. These in turn increase the reputation of the leader of this clan even more.

features

King Osei Tutu II of the Ashanti people in Ghana : His rank goes back to the historical Ashanti chiefdom in maternal line of succession .

Due to the Mana - mechanism, the tribesmen assume that the leader of the most prestigious lineage particularly good relationships with ancestors , spirits and gods maintains. They begin to sacrifice at his house altar . The offerings go to the chief's lineage .

It also comes at a hierarchy of relationships : The lineage of the chief now is considered the oldest of the entire area, immediately with the reasons Rahnen or the spirits and gods related is. The other lineage groups are now considered to be the descendants of the younger sons of the founding ancestor. The result is a system of several originally equivalent descent groups that are connected to each other through marriage, a Ramage (a large Lineage similar to Raymond Firth ) or a cone- shaped communities structure (by Paul Kirchhoff ). In it, the groups of ancestry linked by marriage rules have a hierarchically graded position, which is described by their ancestral distance to the most prestigious group in the center, which is the chief. It does not matter what the real relationships look like.

This constellation causes a relatively permanent institutionalization of political power for the chief and favors the inheritance of his office, mostly to his eldest son ( primogeniture ). His descendants no longer have to commit special heroic deeds in order to be recognized as a leader - it is now sufficient if they gain prestige through the redistribution of goods that flow to them through sacrificial rituals and bride prices.

The chief's reputation can continue to grow because the goods available to him enable him to:

  • to develop its central position in the network of marriage alliances;
  • to procure additional religious reinforcements through cultic events of his power ;
  • to acquire a following that depends on him materially and in terms of status and which may also be armed; thus the chief tends to have the opportunity to enforce his decisions with orders to work , to fight or to believe , even if the ruled are reluctant ; however, the number of followers in chiefdoms is still limited due to limited resources .

While the power of the chiefs in this process continues to increase, some of the ethnic groups can no longer pay the increased taxes and bride prices. They can then decline to the status of the chief's debt slave.

The chief's central position in the network of kinship relationships and religion means that he now decides to a greater extent on all important matters of the entire Ramage . He supervises the production process and mobilizes groups for joint work or for war against neighboring areas. In general, however, he does not own the most important means of production.

In contrast to the segmentary , egalitarian societies, the chiefdom has permanent political power that is tied to an office that can be inherited. Chiefdoms differ from state-organized societies in that there is still no monopoly on the use of force and no sufficiently large enforcement staff that the central authority could use to enforce its decisions. Often the chiefs cannot even decide on their own, they depend on the cooperation of the tribe or the elders and must constantly reckon with the possibility of secession and revolts.

development

Chiefdoms are often expansive and want to expand; they develop an ever increasing need for workers. Only if the lineage or clan of the chief features numerous workers, it can generate a multi-product which is sufficient for its numerous commitments. In addition to exploiting the other ethnic groups of the chiefdom, he will try to gain additional workers through wars against neighboring areas. Because of this, the population of the chiefdoms in their core zone tends to grow rapidly. In addition, they extend over larger areas. If the historical and ecological conditions allow and encourage such an expansion, the vertical power structures will solidify and the first forms of the actual states can develop from the chiefdoms.

If this is not the case, the chiefdoms will collapse again after a period of time. However, they can also form again afterwards. This was the case with the Jingpo , for example , but also with many chiefdoms on Pacific islands .

See also

literature

  • Stefan Breuer : On the sociogenesis of the patrimonial state . In: Stefan Breuer, Hubertreiber (Ed.): Development and structural change of the state (= contributions to social science research. Volume 38). Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3-531-11609-6 , pp. 163-227 ( PDF: 7.6 MB, 66 pages on springer.com).
  • Stefan Breuer: The archaic state. On the sociology of charismatic rule. Reimer, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-496-00384-7 .
  • Robert L. Carneiro : The Chiefdom : Precursor of the State. In: Grant D. Jones, Robert Kautz (Eds.): The Transition to Statehood in the New World. Cambridge University Press, New York 1981, ISBN 0-521-17269-1 , pp 37-79 (English; Extract in the Google Book Search).
  • Timothy K. Earle: Chiefdoms in Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspective. In: Annual Review of Anthropology. Volume 16, October 1987, pp. 279-308 (English; doi: 10.1146 / annurev.an.16.100187.001431 ).
  • Timothy K. Earle (Ed.): Chiefdoms: Power, Economy, and Ideology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997 (English).
  • Jonathan Friedman: Tribes, States, and Transformations. In: Maurice Bloch (Ed.): Marxist Analyzes and Social Anthropology (= Association of Social Anthropologists Studies. Volume 3). Wiley, New York 1975 (English).
  • Elsa M. Redmond (Ed.): Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas. University Press of Florida, Gainesville 1998 (English; review by Timothy K. Earle ).
  • Frank Robert Vivelo: Political Leaders in Segmentary Societies - Chiefs. In: The same: Handbook of cultural anthropology. A basic introduction. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 978-3-12-938320-9 , pp. 202-203 (US original: 1978).

Web links

Wiktionary: chiefdom  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
  • Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek: ad. Chiefdom. (PDF: 221 kB, 39 pp.) In: Introduction to the forms of social organization (part 5/5). Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 2011, pp. 194–196 , archived from the original on October 4, 2013 (documents from her lecture in the 2011 summer semester).;
  • Hans-Rudolf Wicker: Political leadership systems. (PDF: 387 kB, 47 pp.) In: Guide for the introductory lecture in social anthropology, 1995–2012. Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern, July 31, 2012, pp. 40–42.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Hirschberg (Ed.): Dictionary of Ethnology. New edition, 2nd edition, Reimer, Berlin 2005.
  2. ^ Robert L. Carneiro : The Chiefdom: Precursor of the State. In: Grant D. Jones, Robert Kautz (Eds.): The Transition to Statehood in the New World. Cambridge University Press, New York 1981, ISBN 0-521-17269-1 , pp. 37-79, here p. 45 (English; side view in Google book search): “A chiefdom is an autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief. "
  3. ↑ Claude Meillassoux: "The wild fruits of women". About domestic production and the capitalist economy. Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 , p. 80.
  4. ↑ Claude Meillassoux: "The wild fruits of women". About domestic production and the capitalist economy. Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 , p. 79 ff.
  5. ↑ Jonathan Friedman: Tribes, States, and Transformations. In: Maurice Bloch (Ed.): Marxist Analyzes and Social Anthropology. Wiley, New York 1975, pp. 171 ff.
  6. ↑ Stefan Breuer : On the sociogenesis of the patrimonial state . In: Stefan Breuer, Hubertreiber (Ed.): Development and structural change of the state. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1982, pp. 163–227, here p. 171 ff. ( PDF: 7.6 MB, 66 pages on springer.com).
  7. ↑ Jonathan Friedman: Tribes, States, and Transformations. In: Maurice Bloch (Ed.): Marxist Analyzes and Social Anthropology. Wiley, New York 1975, p. 170.
  8. ↑ Stefan Breuer: On the sociogenesis of the patrimonial state. In: Stefan Breuer, Hubertreiber (Ed.): Development and structural change of the state. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1982, pp. 163–227, here p. 180 ( PDF: 7.6 MB, 66 pages on springer.com).
  9. ↑ Stefan Breuer: On the sociogenesis of the patrimonial state. In: Stefan Breuer, Hubertreiber (Ed.): Development and structural change of the state. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1982, pp. 163–227, here p. 184 ( PDF: 7.6 MB, 66 pages on springer.com).
  10. ↑ Elias Canetti : Mass and Power ; Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 335–371, ISBN 3-596-26544-4 .
  11. ↑ Stefan Breuer: On the sociogenesis of the patrimonial state. In: Stefan Breuer, Hubertreiber (Ed.): Development and structural change of the state. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1982, pp. 163–227, here p. 185 ( PDF: 7.6 MB, 66 pages on springer.com).
  12. ↑ Jonathan Friedman: Tribes, States, and Transformations. In: Maurice Bloch (Ed.): Marxist Analyzes and Social Anthropology. Wiley, New York 1975, p. 180.