States of Intoxication by John O'Brien

Author:John O'Brien [O'Brien, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351604987
Google: q1ZgDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-06-13T03:38:38+00:00

The potlatch and sacrifice

A political order based on the potlatch seems to also be one that is based on the sacrificial mechanism (Girard 1988). It is clearly a culture full of mimetic desire and resentment, in which periodic sacrifices were necessary to release social tensions, lest society fell into a state of complete anarchy. Sociability involving alcohol was at the heart of these tensions, and there appears to have been continual anxiety over feasts held by others than the chief, as this naturally implied a rebellion against their authority. However, the possible outcome was not simply the emergence of a rival centre, but also due to an accumulation of resentments against the chief due to his failing to be sufficiently generous, or generous in the way that people perceived as their right, the chief could be sacrificed. Indeed, feasts seem to have often been the contexts of attempts on the life of the chief and powerful individuals (Arnold 1999: 78–9).

It has been argued that small-scale societies are highly likely to be very violent societies, with rates of homicide far above those of state societies, particularly those with a secure monopoly of violence (Pinker 2011). However, this is contested, as it appears that hunter gather societies had a tendency towards peaceful relationships with neighbours (Fry & Söderberg 2014). Ritual life and gift relations also served as a functional equivalent to the monopoly mechanism for the maintenance of internal peaceful interdependencies. Introducing the concept of the potlatch, as a distinctive type of small-scale, proto state society, could be useful for resolving the debate. Indeed, much of the evidence of violence in small-scale societies is based on contexts following the introduction of alcohol, and other goods such as metals and guns, useful not only for potlatch activity, but warfare.

The pattern that the sacrificial mechanism took can be seen in Celto-Germanic mythology. Various tales recount how drinking rituals were implicated in the collapse of the social order, as well as its subsequent resuscitation. Leaders possessed charisma due to their ability to mobilise a warband and defend their community against external threats. However, charisma cannot respond to the internal collapse of the social order, when the group become enemies to each other. Such a situation is especially threatening in weakly centralised societies lacking a judicial system, where the eruption of violence threatens the entire community. In this situation, instead of responding through charisma, reunification is achieved through the production of an enemy in the figure of the scapegoat. Thus, society is often based on the murder of a scapegoat, generally a marginal person (whether from the apex of society, or its periphery) who then becomes sacred for successfully re-establishing the social order (Girard 1988; Szakolczai 2003: 19).

Through Norse mythology, the cosmology related to the socio-political system discussed above, we can tease out a seemingly strange connection between poetry and alcohol, murder and charisma. Odin (Wodan, deriving from the Celtic figure Lug), the leader of all the gods, is the god of poetry and patron of the skalds (Enright 1996: 218).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.