Chapter 8

Question 1

What is social organization?

Answer 1

The patterning of human interdependence in a given society through the actions and decisions of its members.

Question 2

What is power transformative capacity?

Answer 2

The ability to transform a given situation

Question 3

What is politics?

Answer 3

The relationship between social organization, power, and individual and group action

Question 4

What is political anthropology?

Answer 4

The study of power, political structure, political organization, and political action in human society.

Question 5

What are Joan Vincent’s three stages of political anthropology?

Answer 5

1. Formative Political Anthropology
2. Classical Political Anthropology
3. Postcolonial Anthropology and Political Economy

Question 6

What is Formative Political Anthropology?

Answer 6

Early studies of the political organization of non-Western societies (late 19th century and early 20th century)
Focused on binary between state and stateless
Rooted in rigid catergories in a unilineal evolutionary framework that privileged European assumptions around power, authority, and organization

Question 7

What did Lewis Henry Morgan do?

Answer 7

Demonstrated how kinship organizes social life

Question 8

What was Thomas Hobbes’s (1588-1679) famous book Leviathan (1651) about?

Answer 8

He details the importance of a structured government to counter the chaos of the natural impulses on humanity.

Question 9

What is Classical Political Anthropology?

Answer 9

Closely associated with British structural-functionalism
Categories and typologies focused on difference between decision making authority in two types of societies
egalitarian societies
stratifies societies
centralized and uncentralized authority

Question 10

What are egalitarian societies?

Answer 10

Societies in which individuals enjoy equal status and decisions are made through consensus.

Question 11

What are stratified societies?

Answer 11

Societies in which there is a permanent hierarchy that accords some members privileged across to wealth power and prestige.

Question 12

What did Lewellen do?

Answer 12

Created two major catergories of political organization-centrailized and uncentralized authority- that were futher divided into various subgroups.

Question 13

What was the postcolonial political and political economy?

Answer 13

During this phase, anthropologists were concerned with broader questions about power and inequality
Grounded in theoretical apporoaches such as politcal economy, postcolonialism, and globalization
Specifically this phase focuses on the multiplicity of power, rather than preconceived ideas about social and political structures.

Question 14

What is coercion?

Answer 14

Power and control exercised by force or threat of force
Plays a role in many political systems
When political and institutional coercion comes into play on an atmosphere of gender, racial, ethnic, religous, and economic power struggles, unimaginable violence and destruction can occur
E.g. state violence in Guatemala.

Question 15

What is ideology as it is referred to in Marxian analysis?

Answer 15

Ideology refers to those beliefs that explain and justify the social arrangements under which people live

Question 16

What did Gramsci identify?

Answer 16

The differences in how power is consolidated

Question 17

What is domination?

Answer 17

Coercive rule that is generally expensive and unstable.

Question 18

What is hegemony?

Answer 18

A system of leadership in which rulers persuade subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by offering mutual accomodations that nevertheless preserve the rulers’ privileged position.
The concept of hegemony is useful because it draws attention to the central role of human agency, cultural beliefs, and symbols in struggles to consolidate social organization and political control.