The Emergence of Civilization by Charles Keith Maisels

Author:Charles Keith Maisels [Maisels, Charles Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9780415096591
Google: PqynXqeohuoC
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 1993-01-15T04:39:45+00:00

Chapter seven

Theories of the state

As suggested at the outset, chiefs rule in chiefdoms and kings reign over states, while meritocratic entrepreneurs such as big-men, famed hunters, or shamans have merely influence in more acephalous societies. States possess a unique power centre manifesting sovereignty, characterized by ultimate control of the populations which are their subjects. In chieftaincies only hegemony obtains: autonomous foci of power exist over which the centre is merely preponderant (perhaps only for reasons of tradition or prestige) and any of which might secede to form the nucleus of another chiefdom. Yet most theories of state formation fall at the first hurdle through their authors’ failure, or their formulation’s inability, to distinguish chief dom from true state. There is governance in the former, only in the latter is there government: overall social regulation by specialized apparatuses of control emanating from a unique power centre. Unlike the chiefdom, ‘the state is never the kinship system writ large, but is organised on totally different principles’ (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940:6) which can be summed as the contrast between statuses and offices.1

Generalizing, villages are characteristic not just of the Neolithic but of a chieftaincy, whose capital is but the village writ large. By contrast the state necessarily has an urban focus, due not only to elevated population densities and clusters (Lenski 1966:145–6), but to a more ramified division of labour in general, not least in the process of government itself. Further, small-scale societies and chieftaincies are relatively homogeneous in language, belief, and custom, while states tend over time to become inclusive and composed of groups and individuals of disparate ethnic origin. This is possible because the subject’s primary relationship is vertically to the state and not horizontally to the rest of society, as it necessarily is in a less stratified social order where identity and cohesion are at a premium.

Social complexity, stratification, and urbanization are usually discussed in the light of the theories or models of state formation obtaining. It is thus necessary, having previously outlined the spread of villages in the Near East, and also some of the archaeological evidence for the advent of cities, to analyse the theories of state formation currently held.

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