Political Anthropology

Political anthropology concerns the structure of political systems, looked at from the basis of the structure of societies. Political anthropologists include Pierre Clastres, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Georges Balandier, Fredrik Bailey, Jeremy Boissevain, Marc Abélès, Jocelyne Streiff-Fenart, Ted C. Lewellen, Robert L. Carneiro, John Borneman and Joan Vincent.

Political anthropology developed as a recognizable, well-defined branch of anthropology only in the 1940s and 1950s, as it became a main focus of the British functionalist schools, heavily inspired by Radcliffe-Brown, and openly reacting against evolutionism and historicism. The approach was empirical, with the main bulk of work carried out in colonial Africa. The British structural-functionalist school was institutionalised with African Political Systems, edited by Fortes and Evans Pritchard (1940). A similar degree of institutionalization of a distinctive political anthropology never took place in post-war America, partly due to the Parsonian view of the sciences which relegated anthropology to the sphere of culture and symbolism.

Anthropological Approaches to Politics

· the study of social organization is also the study of political organization and processes

· power: control, authority, or influence over others

· the central focus of political anthropological studies can be seen as “where does power

come from?”; “Power lies within any human relationship, whether that power is openly

displayed or carefully avo ided.” (Alice Kehoe)

· areas that anthropologists have explored:

o comparative legal systems

o authority, leadership (charisma) – influence of Max Weber

o levels of social/political complexity: band (egalitarian), rank (chief), stratified

(class) societies, and nation-state

o bureaucracy in complex (read modern) societies; social group formation, social

movements

o colonization and post-colonization

· where does power come from? culture? economic institutions? (remember our earlier

lecture on the “peace of the gift”) ; social institutions? (kinship, religious); political

institutions?