Politics and Power

This chapter examines the organization of societies in which kinship and marriage are less important than power, wealth and a person&s;s position in a social hierarchy. It introduces the elements involved in the transformation of society from small-scale and egalitarian to complex and stratified. The chapter examines anthropological explanations of hierarchy, centralization and the state. A segmentary lineage system is a good place to begin discussing complexity because complexity involves segmentation, or some form of systematic, lawful division of society into groups that have nothing to do with age or sex or gender. The segmentary lineage is based on the notion of shared blood and allows for large, unified groups to form in society. The Nuer numbered some 200,000 persons in Evans-Pritchard&s;s day. The Maku people of the Northwest Amazon Basin predominantly hunt and gather; they have only minimal cultivation of crops.