The evolution of social organization Текст научной статьи по специальности «Философия, этика, религиоведение»

The Evolution of Social Organization

Donald V. Kurtz

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University of Texas-San Antonio

ABSTRACT

This paper asserts that while culture does change, it does not evolve. In anthropology the explanation for the evolution of the nonbiological aspects of the human condition has relied on the paradigm of cultural evolution. This paper argues that non-biological evolution is better explained in terms of the evolution of social organization. It also rejects the materialist bias that dominates the explanations for why and how evolution takes place. Instead it argues that human agents play a larger role in evolution than has been acknowledged. The paper concludes with a model identified as the ‘genetic pulse’ that demonstrates the power of non-materialist forces in evolution and the means of acquiring the ethnographic data necessary to demonstrate the evolution of social organization.

INTRODUCTION

Compared to the ‘hard’ physical and natural sciences that devise experiments and make predictions, anthropology has been, along with other social sciences, a ‘soft’ science because its methodologies are unable to duplicate ‘hard science’ methodologies. The distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science is spurious. Not all hard sciences rely on experiments (astronomy) and their predictions often are far from accurate (atomic physics) (Lett 1987). The hard/soft distinction misrepresents what science is and is not. Regardless of its orientation, science - natural, physical, social - is nothing more than ‘a way of gaining knowledge’ (Ibid.: 45) based upon an epistemological foundation that informs how we know what we know and allows for falsification of propositions derived and supported epistemologi-cally. In science the most accurate epistemology is established by

Social Evolution & History, Vol. 10 No. 2, September 2011 3-48 © 2011 ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House

data that is attained empirically (Lett 1987). In socio-cultural anthropology ethnographies provide that empirical foundation.

Anthropology has been a very successful science. In its breadth (all human societies and every aspect of their existence) and depth (from the appearance of hominins over 3 million years ago to the present) anthropology has provided (largely unappreciated) more knowledge about the human condition than any other social science. In general this knowledge derives from a dedication to exploring two related but largely distinct domains of inquiry that represent universal concerns of human populations and constitute the essence of the anthropological enterprise: the maintenance of human life and the maintenance of human identity (Lett 1987).

The maintenance of life refers to how people engage in those material activities that are concerned with survival: subsistence, means of reproduction, division of labor and the institutional domains, economics and politics, for example, related to these activities (see Table 1). The maintenance of identity refers to how people establish and utilize ideational dimensions of existence: ideologies, meanings, symbols, and aesthetics. These two concerns are embedded in the various paradigms by which anthropologists explore the human condition. Pertinent to this work, the material interest related to the maintenance of life is represented by the paradigm of cultural evolution.1 This paradigm is the most nomothetically grounded of anthropology's paradigms and relies largely on a comparative methodology. The maintenance of identity has been covered historically by several discrete paradigms of which structuralism, symbolic anthropology, and postmodernism provide the current orientations. These paradigms are most dedicated to a cultural relativist and ideographic (as opposed to nomothetic) interpretation of the human condition.

Of these anthropological paradigms, only the paradigm of cultural evolution has constructed a praxis that incorporates elements of each domain - life and identity - in a single methodology. Cultural evolution has done so by relying on a broadly based idea of culture and an epistemology established on empirical ethnographic data. The significance of ethnographic data for the epistemological foundation of the evolution paradigm will be considered later. Before that I shall establish my identity as an apostate of the paradigm of cultural evolution and make a case for an alternative evolution of the non-biological aspects of the human condition.

THE APOSTATE POSITION

In this paper I shall commit the heresy of denying the fundamental principle of cultural evolution, that is that culture evolves. Culture, understood to include material and ideational domains of inquiry, does change and it cannot be ignored in the evolution paradigm. Culture is, after all, a relativist veneer embedded in and spread over all human societies. But as I shall demonstrate, it does not evolve. Instead, in an evolutionary framework culture represents the accumulation of material and ideational traits that complement and stand in a dialectical relationship with human practices related to the maintenance of life that do evolve. I shall commit another heresy by rejecting the domination of the materialist causality for evolution. Instead, as do a few others that differ from my approach (Roscoe 1993; Claessen 2000, 2006), I shall introduce human agents and their ideas as forces in the evolution of social organization.

In what follows I shall interrogate current explanations of the evolution paradigm2 and suggest an alternative methodology. There is considerable truth to the relativist position that the cultures of pre-industrial peoples in general, even those with basic foraging technologies, are rich, infinitely variable, and anything but simple. Cultural relativists rely on a humanistic praxis to try to understand the diversity of cultures.

The evolution paradigm involves a different premise. The evolution paradigm uses a scientific praxis to try to explain the development from the least to the most complex of the non-biological aspects of the human condition. Instead of focusing on the relativist ideal of cultural diversity,3 evolutionists rely on a comparative strategy to account for the reproduction of the regularities and recurrent features in the social organizations of human societies (Steward 1949: 5; 1955: 8; Claessen 2000: 3, 169ff.; Adams 1966).

Advocates of each approach are committed to praxes that have for a century and a half been the source of vitriolic debates regarding their epistemological and methodological foundations. Cultural relativists, concerned largely with the maintenance of identity, live and work quite nicely without paying a scintilla of attention to evolutionist concerns. The evolution paradigm's concern with the maintenance of life, however, would have no validity without the empirical ethnographic data relativists provide to evolution's epistemology. This was demonstrated by the ethnocentric and speculative pseudo-

science of many nineteenth century evolutionists (Morgan and Tylor excluded) whose work either was devoid of reliable ethnographic data or represented the data they had badly. Ethnographies provide the empirical foundation to explain and understand the evolution of the social organizations that constitute the institutions of human societies and changes in the material and ideational dimensions of culture that accompany that evolution.

Anthropologists often include social organizations, institutions, material, and ideational elements in their definitions of culture. But the separation of social organizations and institutions from material (objective artifacts) and ideational (symbolic artifacts) domains of culture also has a precedent in anthropology. This separation is honored more by anthropologists who are persuaded by an ideographic cultural relativism and postmodern posture than by a nomothetically grounded evolutionist perspective. Anthropology's ideational emphasis was certified by the actions of the tribal elders of anthropology and sociology, Kroeber and Parsons (1958) respectively, when they announced which aspects of society and culture were appropriate for research in their respective disciplines. They relegated ‘society ... social systems ... to ... the specific relational system of interaction among individuals and collectivities’. They identified culture ‘narrowly’ with ‘values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems’ (Kroeber and Parsons 1958: 583). In this division sociology got social organization and anthropology got culture, largely of an ideational and relativist variety.

Despite the presumptiveness of these elders in dictating to practitioners in each field their appropriate intellectual enterprises, sociologists have been less intrigued with social evolution than have anthropologists with the evolution of culture (which often includes social relations of various sorts). I will not develop a sociological approach to evolution. But I shall propose how a non-materialist conceptualization of culture as ‘the exercise of thought, the acquisition of general ideas, the habit of connecting cause and effect ... enlivened by organization’ (Gramsci 1917: 44, cited in Buttigieg 1987: 20, emphasis added)4 can be a dynamic force in evolution (Kurtz 2001, 2004). In this perspective, the ideas and practices of human beings engage material forces dialectically to challenge the ontological primacy of the chicken or the egg dilemma in causality. It is a problem that pervades the evolution paradigm and will, probably, never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

THE PROBLEM

The evolution of social organization refers to the differentiation, specialization and integration within and between the social organizations that constitute the institutions by which human populations mobilize material and ideational culture traits to maintain life and identity in their social and physical environments. This focus provides a different way to understand and explain the evolution of human societies than that provided by cultural evolutionists.

For example, writings by the doyens of evolutionary thinking past and present, as well as other contributors to the evolutionist para-digm,5 convey the impression that everything - material, ideational, social - by which anthropologists identify culture evolves temporally and spatially in lockstep, more or less as one totality (Service 1971: 97). There are exceptions to this tendency; Steward's (1955) notion of the culture core, and Harris's (1979) idea of cultural materialism, for example. The idea of the culture core argues that ‘social, political and religious patterns’ (Steward 1955: 37) provide the primary diagnostics by which to determine the evolution of other aspects of culture. Harris's (1979) idea of cultural materialism is based on the premise that societies' behavioural structures (economics, politics) and ideational superstructures (religion, ideology) are the sequential results of a chain of processes that emanate from societies' materialist infrastructures (modes of production). But the impression that culture commonly evolves as a non-discriminated totality occurs regardless of whether their evolution is conceived as unilineal, multilineal, specific, general, or universal and is or is not marked by stages or driven by some prime mover or other cause. This tendency derives from the definitions of culture favoured by cultural evolutionists, some of which suggest that many evolutionists are not really interested in ‘culture’.

Some who write on cultural evolution do not bother to define culture. They prefer instead to talk about and/or around culture and accept it as an adjectival qualification to a universally agreed upon concomitant of evolution (Sahlins and Service 1960; Steward 1955; Service 1971). Others offer perfunctory definitions that seem to have little to do with the relationship of the idea of culture to evolution. They supply a definition of culture more as a courtesy to the concept than its necessary engagement as a problematic in the evolution paradigm (Fried 1967; Peacock and Kirsch 1980).6 But in general, most of those who define culture in an evolutionary context

are beholden to Tylor's representation of culture as that ‘complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society’ (Tylor 1871: 1, emphasis added). This idea of culture as a list of coequal universal traits persists, perhaps, most commonly in one form or another in the definitions of culture favoured by evolutionist anthropologists.7

During the renaissance of the evolution paradigm in mid-20th century Leslie White provided an off-handed, ‘Tylorian’ definition of culture as an ‘extrasomatic, temporal continuum, of things and events dependent upon symboling [that] consists of tools, implements, utensils, clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of art, language, etc.’ (White 1959: 3, parenthesis and emphasis added). Later Cohen provided a more nuanced idea of culture as ‘the energy systems, the objective and specific artifacts, the organizations of social relations, the modes of thought, the ideologies and the total range of customary behaviour that are transmitted from one generation to another by a social group that enable it to maintain life in a particular habitat’ (Cohen 1968b: 1, emphasis added). Still more recently Harris conceptualized culture as the ‘learned, socially acquired traditions of thought and behaviour found in human societies’ (Harris 1997: 50, emphasis added). Most recently Claessen identified culture as ‘the learned whole comprising the knowledge and ability of humankind and of the various groups of which this is comprised’ (Claessen 2000: 3, emphasis added). Emblematic as these definition are of the evolutionists' universal-trait-list-definitions of culture, except for Harris's (1979) cultural materialism, they show little discrimination regarding the relative importance for evolution of the totality of traits that they include in their definitions.8

There is inherently nothing wrong with these definitions; they are just some of the many identified by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952). They merely stand in sharp contrast to the cultural relativists' ideographic ideas of culture as an ideational domain associated with discrete societies. Stephen Tyler sums up the relativist position on culture with his assertion that general ideas (such as those above) have ‘never been particularly useful’ and what anthropology needs ‘is a more limited notion of culture which stresses theories of cultures (Tyler 1969: 14). This perspective emphasizes the uniqueness

of each culture that Boaz asserted (see endnote 3) and rejects any idea that cultures are comparable and might evolve.

I contend that the profitable discrimination for explaining and understanding evolution should be made between the material9 and ideational domains of culture, on the one hand, and, on the other, social organizations - the distinctive and identifiable categories of social roles and relations inherent in social institutions that differentiate, specialize, integrate, and reproduce the increased complexity that characterizes evolution (Table 1). I shall demonstrate later that social organization trumps other traits in what it reveals about evolution and represents the proper focus by which to explain it. A brief exegesis (see Endnote 1) of thinking on evolution by a few select savants between the mid-19th and 20th centuries establishes an epistemology to assess the dialectical tension regarding the evolution of social organization and the evolution of culture that most American anthropologists resolved in favour of culture.10

EXEGESIS

Today the idea of evolution that refers to changes in culture is likely to reflect the primary dictionary definition of evolution as an increased complexity of forms. It is true that the ideational and material aspects of culture change temporally and spatially. This is construed by some current evolutionist anthropologists to refer to the increased complexity of cultures, social structures, hierarchies -human societies in general (Carneiro 2003). Still, in the century between roughly 1850 and 1950 some evolutionist thinkers, early anthropologists, and others, including critics of the evolution paradigm, coped with the problems of what constituted evolution and what actually evolved in human societies and their cultures.

Lowie (1948: 32-33), for example, a critic of the evolution paradigm, identified the etymological and biological meanings of evolution as they were used by the 19th century thinkers. Etymologically Lowie pointed out that ‘to evolve’ refers to an ‘unfolding’ or ‘unrolling’.11 But, he argues that not all aspects of culture, such as language and - mistakenly - social organization, change in this way. Today the idea that evolution unfolds is near last in dictionary definitions of evolution, far below the main idea of an increased complexity. This suggests a shift in emphasis over time regarding the primary ideas of the definition.12 In its biological connotation

Lowie refers to the still respectable Darwinian idea of evolution (extrapolated from The Descent of Man) as ‘descent with modification’ . Lowie uses this idea as a synonym for evolution that, when applied to culture, connotes a permanent change - one that is ‘not ephemeral, but lasting’ (Lowie 1948: 32) - in a cultural trait, such as social organization. These ideas relate to how Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan thought of evolution in the 19th century as they and others contributed to the establishment of anthropology as a distinct scholarly and scientific discipline.

Spencer is largely responsible for the cachet attached to the anthropological idea of evolution, and his understanding of evolution went through several explications. Initially he rejected the idea that evolution referred to a process of unfolding (Spencer 1851: 415). Instead, as he developed the idea, evolution was reflected in societies' political, religious and economic organizations (Idem 1857: 465) as they and societies at large went through a ‘continuous differentiation and integration’ (Idem 1863: 216) such that ‘structural traits’ (Idem 1886: 331) provided the mechanisms by which to determine evolution. Ultimately he concluded that evolution resulted in the ‘increased complexity of human societies’ (Idem 1896: 391, emphasis added). As noted, this remains the essence of the idea of social and cultural evolution as it is used and identified lexically today, especially by Carneiro (2003), who is ‘the spokesman of all those who considered growing complexity ... the main characteristic of evolution’ (Claessen 2006: 5). Spencer's idea of evolution as a ‘continuous differentiation’ provides the key to understanding what that increased complexity entails.13

Tylor (1871) eventually accreted his idea of culture as an allinclusive array of traits (including survivals from previous cultural formations) identified exclusively with human societies to an idea of evolution that was divested of biologic implications. In effect, this formulation became dominant in anthropological thinking as the distinguishing criteria by which to evaluate the evolution of culture. Shortly thereafter, Morgan (1963 [1877]) resuscitated Spencer's early idea of evolution as an unfolding. Morgan identified how the idea of evolution as an ‘unfolding’ embodied the idea of a ‘differentiation’ of institutions that differed significantly from the Tylorian notion of evolution as an all-inclusive change in culture traits. Morgan said:

As we re-ascend along the several lines of progress ... and

eliminate one after the other, in the order in which they ap-

peared, inventions and discoveries [read culture traits and their causal mechanisms], on the one hand, and institutions [social organizations] on the other, we are enabled to perceive that the former [culture] stand to each other in progressive, and the latter [social organizations cum institutions] in unfolding relations (Morgan 1963 [1877]: 4, emphases and parentheses inserted).

Morgan's distinction between the progressive accumulation of material culture traits, on the one hand, and the unfolding of social organization, on the other, long preceded Lowie's (1948) argument that evolution is selective and that changes in some culture traits are not necessarily evolutionary. Culture, as Morgan demonstrates in his hierarchic classification of ‘ancient societies’, does become quantitatively more complex as societies evolve. And culture, as we also know, integrates and reintegrates differently at different times and under different circumstances. Culture as conceptualized by Morgan also may complement and provide a veneer over social organizations. But as he clearly argues - and I concur - culture does not unfold or differentiate. That is a characteristic of institutions and - contrary to Lowie's argument - the agency derived from the very lack of permanency inherent in social organizations embedded in those institutions.

For example, it is impossible to find any social organization - political, religious, economic, legal, and so forth - that has not changed over time and that does not continue today in our high velocity world to change, reproduce, differentiate, specialize, and reintegrate ever more rapidly. I contend that social organizations, integral components of institutions and the primary agency of institutional change represent the proper foci for the explanation of evolution. To suggest this process (or almost any other related to the evolution paradigm) leads to the quagmire of points of view, muddled semantic discriminations, and contradictions among advocates of the paradigm.

Goldschmidt argues that social institutions do not evolve. ‘Rather,’ - Goldschmidt asserts, - ‘they adjust to meet new circumstances as they arise’ (1959: 106). For Goldschmidt (also see Cohen 1968b; Bennett 1976), adjustments represents short term strategies by which members of a society cope with problems that are triggered by the quotidian pressures of social life. Cohen, on the other hand, draws intellectual sustenance from a variety of sources (Cohen 1971: 21-22) to argue that institutions provide the modus operandi of cultural evolution understood as ‘adaptation ...

success measured by the ability of a population to survive and reproduce’ (Cohen 1971: 5). Claessen, as are others who have a broad perspective of culture, is ambiguous about the nature of culture involved in evolution. At one point Claessen asserts that, ‘evolution is ... concerned with changes in culture’ (2000: 3). Later he reduces culture to its institutional components by arguing that ‘evolution (is) the phenomenon that institutions ... in the course of time will be subject to structural change’ (Ibid.: 153, parenthesis inserted).

Recall that Lowie (1948: 32) suggests that social organization can evolve only if the changes in the organization are permanent, that is ‘not ephemeral and long lasting’. As I conceive evolution, few changes in social organization are permanent. Instead, social organizations are subject to myriad on-going systemic adjustments, the synergy of which results ultimately in the differentiation, specialization, and integration of social roles and institutions that account for evolution.

The semantic and conceptual disjunctions that pervade the writings of evolutionist anthropologists go beyond disagreements over the role of institutions in evolution. They are marred by indifference to some variations in ideas that were cleared up long ago. Perhaps the most relevant and egregious of these disjunctions is the considerable ambiguity and confusion among evolutionists regarding the ideas of social structure and social organization and their relationship to evolution.

In the purely theoretical discussions of evolution that are largely devoid of ethnographic contexts, some evolutionists apparently find little reason to address the nuances of social structures and social organizations (White 1949; Steward 1955; Sahlins and Service 1960; Harris 1979; Carneiro 2003). They focus instead on the implicit power of the idea of culture to make their points. Others who apply the idea of structure and organization to identifiable ethnographic consequences of ‘cultural evolution’ often integrate the idea of a social structure into the idea of a social organization (White 1959; Service 1962). Still others who rely on ethnographic demonstrations of evolution may refer indiscriminately to structure and organization (Cohen 1971; Claessen 2000). The characteristics of these social relations are not always clearly delineated and frequently are used interchangeably. The ambiguity regarding structure and organization persists despite the fact that their properties represent a dialectic that was resolved long ago (Linton 1936; Firth 1951,

1954) and, as I will show below, negate to my satisfaction the idea that social structures evolve and are instead, from my point of view, the product of the evolution of social organization.

Social structures are constituted of categories of social statuses that represent the static positions people hold in societies: mother, warrior, doctor, friend, and so forth (Linton 1936). A chart showing a configuration of kinship statuses frozen in a moment of ethnographic time would be a classical anthropological depiction of this kind of social relation. In an evolutionary perspective, at least since Spencer (1886: 331), social structures have been depicted most commonly as those static positions that are embedded in economic, political, religious and the other social relations, or as social relations established in evolutionary stages, such as bands, pastor-alists, tribes, chiefdoms, horticulturalists, and states. Some savants also reject the idea of social structure because politically conservative functionalists, such as Parsons, use it to reject any idea of conflict as a motive force in evolution (Lenski 1966; Harris 1979).

Social organizations, on the other hand, are constituted of categories of social roles. Social roles embody the agency and practices that are inherent in the statuses that people hold: mothers engage in mothering, politicians in politics, soldiers fight battles, friends provide aid and comfort, and so forth. In practice each status will embody several roles and considerable multitasking. The roles of a soldier may include fighting battles, winning the hearts and minds of potential enemies, killing enemies, training recruits, building bridges, being a husband, son, and father (Linton 1936; Firth 1951, 1954). In practice, the various contexts in which the roles of a status may be deployed reflect the inherent impermanency and fluidity of social organization that provides stimuli for evolutionary change.

The inherent complexity and dialectic of social roles and their actor-induced performances are the fundamental ingredients that drive the changes in social relations that impel an ‘increased complexity’ represented by the differentiation, specialization, and integration of social organizations. In short, social structures, the static quality of social relations depicted as frozen examples in evolutionary typologies (bands, tribes, agriculturalists), are the consequence of the reproductive and ongoing, persistent evolutionary pulsations in the practices of role playing agents and agencies that constitute social organizations. The differentiation and specialization produced by the practices of agents within and between social organizations accounts more accurately and nomothetically for evolution than

the accumulation of complementary culture traits. A model to depict the evolution of social organization requires an epistemological foundation that lends itself to the praxis of data and theory.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND EVOLUTION Epistemology

Strategies by which evolutionists gather and organize ethnographic data - the epistemological foundation of the evolution paradigm -to render them applicable to a problem are under-developed and capricious. It is not unusual for practitioners to neglect to inform how ethnographic data is procured to enable it to be processed into explanations regarding evolution and the maintenance of life and identity. But it is essential for evolutionist anthropologists to control a body of ethnographic data. There are few acceptable short cuts to the collection of these data.14

Y. A. Cohen was, arguably, one of the most ethnographically informed anthropologists. He acquired his ethnographic data the old fashioned way - he read most of it himself, at least early in his career. He began to acquire the ethnographic knowledge that led to his series, Man in Adaptation (1968a, 1968b, 1971 and other publications), during an appointment early in his career at a research institute. He continued thereafter to augment this knowledge. Later in his career he did this with the assistance of graduate students.15

When Claessen and Skalnik (1978) initiated the ‘early state project’ they were, arguably, the most transparent in revealing how to collect and interpret data. In compiling The Early State volume, they obtained ethnographic data on 20 ‘early states’ from contributors who provided the ethnographic data chapters to the volume. Each contributor was requested to supply specific information on a number of traits that Claessen and Skalnik extrapolated from ethnographies on preindustrial state formations. From these data, Claessen (1978) established an evolutionary taxonomy of inchoate, typical, and transitional early states. He continued to augment these data and rely on them for a number of subsequent volumes and publications on the ‘Early State Project’.

Below I shall suggest a research strategy that will elicit data (see Appendix)16 on the social organizations related to the spheres of institutionalized social activity that constitute human societies and organize these data taxonomically (Table 1). The result of this

exercise will reveal a model of the general evolution of social organizations from least to most differentiated, specialized, and integrated.17

Table 1

A taxonomic classification of levels of integration

LEVELS Spheres of Institutionalized Social Activity

Socio- Technological Integration Exploitative Technologies

Economies Politics Marriage Family Kinship Religion Social Control (Law) Education (Conformity) Social Stratifi- cation Change

Post- Industrial

Liminal Phase

Industrial high role and institutional differentiation/specialization

Fossil Fuels Machines

Agricultural Irrigation

Plow

Pastoralism Predatory Social Organizations (Culture) Maintenance of Life — Maintenance of Identity

Transhumance

Herding

Horticulture Intensive 60%+

Medium 30-60%

Low 10-30%

Hunting and Gathering Sedentary

Nomadic low role and institutional differentiation/specialization

The first step requires the selection of a sample of ethnographies related to the levels of integration identified in Table 1. One ethnography representative of each level of integration will provide more ethnographic data than most anthropologists control and the sample can be augmented over time. The second step involves extracting the ethnographic data that are related to the institutionalized spheres of social activity (economics, politics, etc.) in Table 1 for each society in the sample. When the collection of data is complete they should show that nomadic hunters and gatherers and industrial state formations represent, respectively, the least and most differentiated, specialized, and integrated levels of integration. Sedentary foraging, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural societies represent intermediate levels.

At the height of the neo-evolution renaissance, Leach (1961) condemned evolutionist research strategies and the taxonomies they often produced. He argued that evolutionists merely pigeon-holed data and equated their research strategies to butterfly collecting. Leach's argu-

ment refers more to the 19th century evolution than the neo-evolution of the mid-twentieth century.

In the 19th century the ethnographic record was just beginning to expand. Many of the taxonomies generated by these data were speculative creations. Many were based on the presumption of a unilineal evolution through which all human societies were thought to have passed. Others were dedicated to discovering the historic origin of specific cultural traits, such as incest, the family, and religion. Some were simply fanciful. By the early 20th century the 19th century evolution paradigm had collapsed under attacks from cultural relativists, epistemological vulnerability, and, perhaps most significantly, its association with Marxist thinking.

The epistemology of the neo-evolution of the mid-twentieth century was established on a more precisely developed body of ethnographic data and ethnology. The problems addressed by the neoevolution paradigm remained broadly the same as that of its 19th century predecessor: how to demonstrate and account for the evolution of human societies and cultures. The methodology used to accomplish this, the praxis of theory and data, was more scientifically rigorous and nomothetically oriented. Various taxa, the state for example, and larger taxonomies, such as Table 1, provided mechanisms either to generate inductively or apply deductively hypotheses to explain the reproduction of recurrent features of social and cultural phenomena.18

The taxonomy represented by the levels of integration (Table 1) is, like other taxonomies, merely a heuristic device to make sense out of a disparate body of data. In anthropology, ethnographic data provide the epistemological foundation from which evolutionist anthropologists constructed evolutionary taxonomies. In the evolution paradigm established by Service (1962), bands, tribes, chiefdoms (and subsequently states), represent the taxa of one taxonomic classification. Each taxon, bands for example, represents a predictable range of recurrent social organizations wherever the taxon is found worldwide. An anthropologist informed by ethnographic data ought to be able to describe and analyze in detail the social organizations and pertinent culture traits associated with the various taxa.

Cohen (1969) was a past-master at this exercise. For example, in one paper he used ethnographic data to establish a taxonomy of incorporative and expropriated state formations. He then used ethno-

graphic data to explain how practices related to adultery, incest, and celibacy accounted for differences between each taxon. Analyses of urban states in the Old and New Worlds allowed Adams (1966) to explain recurrent regularities in the evolution of cities and help to disprove Wittfogel's (1957) hypotheses that the origin of state formations relied on the development of irrigation. Other evolution problems may require a different classification, such as the evolution of state formations (Claessen 1978), or none at all, such as the origin of the state (Carneiro 1970; Service 1975). In the neo-evolution paradigm the causes of evolution became less imaginary and more nomothetically directed.

Praxis

The development of an extensive ethnographic record in the first half of the 20th century provided the ethnographic and taxonomic epistemological foundation for the development of the neo-evolution paradigm that emerged in the 1960s. This foundation enabled the modern praxes by which anthropologists related data and theory to explain an array of evolutionary phenomena. Among others, these include the origin of state formations (Carneiro 1970) and their subsequent evolution (Claessen 1978; Grinin 2008), the emergence of social stratification and the hitherto unrecognized significance of the ramage as a component of social stratification (Kirchoff 1959 [1955]; Firth 1957; Sahlins 1958; Lenski 1966; Fried 1967), the ‘revolutions’ related to the evolution of civilizations (Ribeiro 1968), and the adaptations populations make to the energy harnessed by their socio-technological formations (Cohen 1968a, 1968b, 1971, 1983). The fundamental problem to which the evolution paradigm remains dedicated is an explanation of the cause(s) of the evolution of social organization.

Cause. The cause(s) of evolution has been an especially nettle-some problem for evolution theory. Service (1971) resolved this issue in part when he argued convincingly that there is no single prime mover of evolution. Still, there is a strong predisposition among evolutionists to rely on materialist explanations of evolution.

White (1949, 1959) suggested the original proposition that the amount of energy harnessed by a society's technology is the driving force of evolution. He argued this without developing the finer discriminations that a taxonomic classification might provide to demonstrate this hypothesis. He relied instead on a ‘general’ flow model of evolution to make his case. Cohen developed a materialist

approach to evolution based on the idea of adaptation, ‘the key mechanism in the evolutionary process’ (Cohen 1971: 3). Cohen (1968a, 1968b) argued that societies and culture evolve as they adapt to their environments in direct relationship to the ability of a population to use a specific technology, such as digging sticks, hunting and gathering, industry, irrigation, or domesticated animals, to harness energy in an environment. Harris' (1979, 1997) developed the idea of cultural materialism to argue the hypothesis, noted earlier, that institutions (structures) and ideologies (superstructures) evolve in response to the ability of technologies related to modes of production to harness energy (infrastructure).19

These models support Carneiro's (2002, 2003) Marxist argument that materialist approaches have provided the most powerful explanation for change in the evolution paradigm. But they allow the mistaken idea that materialist factors - technologies and energy sources, for example - are irrefutable causes of evolution. This is not so. Materialist factors only establish a correlation between techno-energy factors and the evolution of social organizations. Correlations are not necessarily causes.

There are those who think that current materialist formulations for evolution are simply more sophisticated concatenations of preexisting idea that have matured as old wine in new bottles. They seek other, less correlative and more direct triggers for evolution, such as structural impulses (Claessen 2000) or the role of the active agent (Roscoe 1993). Two models have been suggested recently that attempt to account for less materialist evolutionary triggers:20 The Complex Interaction Model (CIM hereafter) and the genetic pulse. The CIM is the product of work by Professor Claessen and various collaborators (Cleassen 2000, 2006; Claessen, Van de Velde and Smith 1985; Claessen and Van de Velde 1987, 1991; Claessen and Oosten 1996; Claessen and Van Bakel 2006). The genetic pulse was suggested by Kurtz (2001, 2004). Each model considers how and why evolution takes place.

The CIM represents a ‘general model of evolution’ that is intended primarily to account for how ‘socio-political organizations’ evolve (Claessen 2000: 155). Because some societies, such as nomadic foragers, do not have identifiable political structures the CIM focuses on the political evolution of chiefdoms and early state formations for which political structures may be identified ethnographically (Claessen, Van de Velde and Smith 1985; Claes-

sen 2000: 162). In one context the CIM accounts for the evolution of chiefdoms and states in general. In a second context the CIM account for the evolution of chiefdoms and states that occur as ‘streams’ in specific geographic areas of the world (Claessen 2000; Claessen and Van Bakel 2006).

To explain how evolution takes place in chiefdoms and state formations the CIM relies heavily on the interaction of four primary factors. These include the ‘format of the society’ (also identified as the ‘societal format’), economy, ideology, and socio-political organization. The format of the society refers to the relationship between the size of the population and its means of production and provides the framework within which evolution occurs. To determine evolution through the CIM it is necessary to establish the nature of the interaction between these factors. This, admittedly, is difficult (Claessen 2000: 155-156, 161). To develop the CiM to account for the evolution of early states and chiefdoms Claessen and his collaborators demonstrate the varying and reciprocal influence of the factors that determine how their interaction triggers evolution.

In one test case that demonstrated the power of the CIM as a general model for the evolution of early states, Claessen, Van de Velde and Smith (1985: 255; also see Claessen 2000: 155) determined that the reciprocal influences of ‘ideology, format of the society, and ... the economy (created) the conditions under which socio-political organization emerges ... (and trigger) ... more elaborate development’ (Claessen 2000: 155). In this example ‘sociopolitical organization became the fourth factor ... which influenced the other three ... as a co-determinant’ and resulted in evolution (Ibid.). Apparently non-evolutionary changes may occur as a result of the interaction of factors related to the economy, social format and ideology. But evolution, understood here as changes in the complexity of social structures associated with these three factors, occurred only when sociopolitical organization was injected into the equation (Ibid.: 155; Claessen 2006: 9). Claessen (2000) and his collaborators also postulated that evolution would occur when the four primary factors of the CIM interacted reciprocally with other secondary factors, such as the physical environment (water, soils) and social environment (neighbouring societies).

In other contexts Claessen and various collaborators hypothesize that the CIM may account for evolutionary regularities and

differences in ‘streams’ of political organization in different parts of the world. In this context the CIM approximates Steward's demonstration of how the ‘culture core’ composed of social, political and religious patterns are the consequence of subsistence activities and economic arrangements in multilinear courses of evolution (Steward 1955: 37). In a specific example, Claessen and Van Bakel (2006) demonstrate how the interaction among the four major factors and secondary factors of the CIM influenced streams of political evolution in Africa and in Oceania.

To the credit of Claessen and his collaborators, they do inject the role of the agent in evolution into the model of the CIM to explain why evolution takes place. With rare exception (Roscoe 1993; Kurtz 2001, 2004, and below) this aspect of evolution has been slighted. Under the influence of the CIM they address the role of the agent in two contexts.

In the first and most general accounting of the agent in evolution the CIM relies on a human choice model as a response to problems related to providing for human necessities: food, clothing, shelter, protection. In this argument people in general make choices on how to cope with survival based upon preceding conditions that influence subsequent conditions: ‘action invokes reaction (that) set off a series of continual changes’ (Claessen 2006: 13; also see Idem 2000: 163ff.). In the second context the CIM acknowledges the possible role of the ‘great man or woman’, such as Jeanne d'Arc or Jenghis Khan, to stimulate evolution is specific historic or evolutionary contexts (Idem 2000: 161ff.).

The CIM works best as an explanation of evolution at a high level of abstraction. To demonstrate how the CIM works ‘in concrete cases, the factors given are insufficiently specific’ (Claessen 2000: 155). But then evolution is not usually construed in terms of individual societies. Instead almost all evolutionary models are designed to offer explanations at a high level of abstraction. The model of the genetic pulse is no different. But in some contexts it does differ significantly from the CIM.

The genetic pulse does not represent a ‘general model’ of evolution, nor is it concerned specifically with the evolution of sociopolitical evolution. Instead the genetic pulse suggests a model of general evolution within which political evolution occurs as a component of the general pattern. It argues that the causes of general evolution are, in any specific or even general way, largely unknown

and unknowable. How to account for evolution given these postulations is the problem the genetic pulse addresses.

The genetic pulse postulates that ‘no single force moves evolution. Instead sundry forces are always at work at any given historical moment and at any given historical moment some forces will be more important than others. But none works to the exclusion of others (Kurtz 2001: 138). The forces that stimulate evolution in the genetic pulse represent a ‘congeries of impulses that emanate from the dynamic interactions of material elements, environmental conditions, ideational constructs, and human practices’ (Idem 2004: 155). Within that congeries of sundry evolutionary forces, two factors represent constants that are central to and rely on the practices of human agents involved in material and ideational dimensions of the pulse. These constants refer to contradictions in social relations and practices related to hegemonic culturation (Idem 1996a, 1996b,

2001, 2004). Each of these factors privileges the role of the agent in evolution. The agents' engagement with social contradictions informs why evolution takes place and, as a critical cultural component of hegemonic culturation, how it takes place. I also introduce liminality as a temporal-spatial dimension of evolution within which the sundry forces of the genetic pulse interact dynamically to stimulate the evolution of social organizations.

Contradictions in social life refer to those discrepant principles and practices that are characterized by two or more entities that are constituted by virtue of being integral and mutually interdependent features of a social organization and, therefore, potentially in conflict by virtue of their relationship (Callinicos 1988). Because of their potential to evoke conflict, social organizations become both the medium for and the outcome of the practices of agents dedicated to resolving contradictions that are inherent in all social organizations (Giddens 1979). The driving agency of the genetic pulse - why social organization evolves - results from the feedback between contradictions and their resolutions. As contradictions in social organizations are either resolved (rare) or satisfactorily adjusted to extant circumstances, other contradictions emerge that again demand eventually the attention of human agents. Evolution may not be the immediate consequences of an adjusted or resolved contradiction. But over time the accumulation of these adjustments, their relation to other elements of the pulse, and

their fixes result in the qualitative changes that indicate evolution (Giddens 1979; Roscoe 1993; Kurtz 2001, 2004).

This approach challenges Carneiro's Marxist-based argument that material forces alone drive evolution. In defence of a materialist causality in evolution Carneiro asserts that ‘ideas are not uncaused causes’ (2002: 96). This kind of thinking represents ‘a misdirected scholarly orthodoxy and epistemological bias’ (Kurtz 2004: 151). A logical response to Carneiro's materialist bias is that neither are material forces uncaused causes. Even culture, conceptualized differently from the Tylorian prejudice that attends most evolutions thinking, may be implicated as an evolutionary force. I demonstrate this below.

Hegemonic culturation refers to the interface of hegemony as an ‘intellectual and moral leadership’ (Gramsci 1971: 57)21 and the idea of culture as ‘the exercise of thought, the acquisition of general ideas, the habit of connecting cause and effect ... enlivened by organization’ (Idem 1917: 44, cited in Buttigieg 1987: 20). Hegemonic culturation refers to the practices by which hegemonic agents (cultural hegemons) - leaders, influentials, intellectuals (from ruling and subaltern classes), associations, social categories - use power constituted of material and ideational resources to exert influence and inculcate through their rhetoric, discourses, and actions ideas that motivate populations to become aware of and change their socially and culturally constructed ways of understanding how things ought to happen, that is their culturally engrained ‘habit of connecting cause and effect’ (Ibid.). Contradictions that demand resolution by hegemonic agents emerge most critically at the interface of those conditions where those who see no need to change and those who do engage their mutual power resources in conflict.22

In short, the practices of hegemonic agents and culture itself -that agency of ongoing change in a populations' perceptions and comprehensions of cause and effect in their actions and social relations - helps to drive the evolution of social organization (see Kurtz 2004). This is difficult to accomplish precisely because changes in culture require people to change how they think things should happen! There are conditions under which contradiction resolution and hegemonic culturation (and the CIM)23 are likely to be most effective. I postulate that the impact of contradiction resolution and hegemonic culturation is most likely to initiate evolution when they occur with other sundry agencies of the genetic pulse in the interstitial limens between extant and as yet unformulated so-

cial organizations and cultures (Turner 1969, 1974, 1979; Kurtz 1996, 2004).

Liminality refers to the condition that occurs at those real and abstract points in space and time - limens - when the viability and coherence of existing social organization are challenged and contradicted by newer, crystallizing organizations (Turner 1969, 1974, 1979).24 Limens are those abstract spaces where structures, organizations, and identities become less coherent and obvious; where social and cultural forces in the genetic pulse may evoke change in practices, material objects, organizations, symbols, meaning, and values that birth a different sociocultural reality than that which existed before entry into the limen.

Liminal phases are difficult to depict graphically. In general they are the spaces indicated in Table 1 by the lines that exist between institutions, politics and religion, for example, and taxa of evolutionary classifications, such as industrial and post-industrial formations. In Table 1, I use dotted lines instead of a solid line to convey an example of a liminal space between an industrial and post-industrial level of integration. Within that limen I suggest that a post-industrial level of integration is incubating and growing to challenging gradually the social organizations and cultures that characterize the existing industrial stage of evolution.25

We know very little of what takes place in the limen that might lead to the threshold of an identifiable evolutionary stage. I postulate that the limen between evolutionary taxa, such as industrial and post-industrial levels of integration, represents the zone in which the activities and power of agents become significant in evolution. They strive to resolve contradictory relations and he-gemonically enculturate populations that inhabit the limen so that one adaptation gradually gives way to another. It is in these liminal interstices that the practices of hegemonic agents - the genetic pulse in general - alter organizational forms sufficiently that when they cross the liminal threshold and emerge they are constituted of different organizations than those that entered the limen and are adapted to a different, theoretically more complex institutional framework. The nineteenth century evolutionists sought the historical origins of cultural traits. The limen provides the context in which the origin of social organizations is the result of ‘nomothetic practices (that give rise) to a type of institution under a set of recurrent conditions’ (Harris 1979: 78, parenthesis inserted).

In an evolutionary context, liminal spaces provide the source for the origin of different social and cultural condition. They may occur between evolutionary stages, semi-sedentary hunters and gatherers and semi-nomadic swidden horticulturalists for example. They may occur in sociopolitical organizations when big men evolve into chiefs (Kurtz 2004), and in economic organizations when peripheral, underdeveloped markets become developed factor markets (Idem 1974). Total societies, usually ‘tribal’ or pre-agrarian (even industrial) may enter a liminal state that sets it apart from other societies for a time as its members work out problems related to their existence and identities (Turner 1979: 11ff.). Each of these developments share a liminal condition in which something emerges that was qualitatively different from that which entered the limen.

As a cultural force, liminality provides the venue where the dialectic between those who want change and those who resist it results in conflict (Giddens 1979; Roscoe 1993; Kurtz 2001).26 But the very fact that the dialectic exists connotes a tendency for an institutional complex to transmutate and reintegrate into something else that becomes part of new institutional complex. Limens provide the indeterminate time-space continuum where, under pressure from the genetic pulse, the practices and exertions of power of cultural hegemons resolve contradictions in social organizations that presage the evolution of different social organizations and complementary material and ideational cultural objects.

The model of the genetic pulse may be no less abstract than the CIM. But it does differ in postulations. As I concluded elsewhere (Kurtz 2004), the genetic pulse relies on the synergy of ideas, environmental conditions, interventions by cultural hegemons, material conditions, and an array of other sundry forces. The forces in the genetic pulse that drive evolution do not have equal impact. Change agents exist in all institutions and their change-evoking practices are historically and ethnographically situational, contextual, and contingent (Idem 2001: 155). Evolution occurs in different contexts at different times under different circumstances, but in recurrent and regular patterns. Similar to the CIM, the genetic pulse is rooted in complex interactions that involve human agents. But unlike the CIM the genetic pulse accords the human agent a more impelling role in the resolution of contradictions that are universal to the human condition and in the subsequent

evolution of social organizations in all types of societies and cultures.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper is dedicated to the presumption that culture does not evolve. Instead I argue that the evolution of the non-biological aspects of the human condition is better explained by investigating the evolution of social organization. Culture accumulates and may become quantitatively more complex over space and time. But the qualitative changes that distinguish evolution are the consequence of the differentiation, specialization, and integration of the social organizations and the role performances of agents they embody and that are embedded in the institutions that constitute human societies.

As a methodology to explain evolution I pose a number of queries in an attached Appendix. These queries are related to the institutionalized spheres of human activity identified in Table 1 that are common to all human societies. The queries in the Appendix enable the extrapolation of data from the ethnographies that constitute the fundamental epistemology for the evolution paradigm. These data allow the establishment of taxonomic classifications that make sense of the plethora of data the ethnographic record provides. Taxonomic classifications in conjunction with ethnographic data also enable the development of inductive and deductive hypotheses to explain the qualitative changes in human societies over time and space. Anthropologists have developed different strategies to accomplish these explanations. Traditionally most strategies have argued for materialist explanations. I suggest two strategies, the CIM and genetic pulse, which in one form or another provide alternatives to the materialist bias that pervades the thinking of evolutionist anthropologists (also see Roscoe 1993).

The cachet attached to the singular importance of the idea of culture to anthropology is largely an American obsession. It pervades almost all aspects of thinking and research by American ‘cultural’ anthropologists, which includes almost all American anthropologists. Cultural evolution constitutes one of the field's paradigms, and that too is largely an American construction, even though today the paradigm of cultural evolution has little credibility with American anthropologists other than archaeologists. Current research related to the evolution paradigm is largely a European endeavour. While some European anthropologists still refer to the paradigm as cultural evolution, evolutionary thinking outside

the United States is conceived largely as social evolution. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than the journal dedicated to Social Evolution and History. The editors of the journal apparently have some deeper insight into evolution than is common among American anthropologists. In this paper I have tried to identify the rationale for the idea of social evolution as it is used by those anthropologists who remain dedicated to the evolution paradigm.

NOTES

1 Paradigms related to political economy and historical and cultural materialism also are dedicated primarily to concerns regarding the maintenance of life.

2 I will not engage in a review of the evolution paradigm. That has been done by others (see Harris 1968; Claessen 2000; Carneiro 2003, among others). My intention is to present my point of view on this topic and will rely on the contributions of others only as they related to the problem at hand.

3 If Professor Claessen (Kurtz personal communication with Claessen 2010) is correct, the idea of cultural relativism and its hostility to evolutionary thinking is not well established in Europe. In the United States cultural relativism emerged under the aegis of Franz Boas as an anti-Marxist intellectual posture that was hostile to the idea of evolution. Stocking (1974: 66) cites Boaz's comment that, ‘in ethnology all is individuality’ and reminds that by ‘individual’ Boaz meant individual cultures. Relativism has carried though paradigmatic contexts in American anthropology (historical particularism, structuralism, ethnoscience) to the present where it persists in postmodern thinking. Relativists assume a severe idiographic methodology that decries evolutionary thinking and the comparative method upon which it rests. Relativists hold that the culture associated with each society if unique, not comparable, and grounded in ideational premises that eschew materialist thinking.

4 Also see Kurtz (1996a, 1996b) for political economic applications of this

idea.

5 Past doyens of the evolution paradigm are represented by White (1949, 1959), Steward (1949, 1955), Service (1962, 1971), and Harris (1979). Those from the present include Carneiro (2003), Claessen (2000, 2006), Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev (2002). Among others are Goldschmidt (1959), Lenski (1966), Adams (1966), Cohen (1968a, 1968b, 1971, 1983), Ribeiro (1968), Peacock and Kirsch (1980), Hallpike (1986), Roscoe (1993), and Graber (1995, 2007).

6 Fried's gratuitous comment, ‘it may be asked why define culture when we want to talk about political organization? It is precisely because we want to talk about political organization that we define culture’ (Fried 1967: 7), is an example of such a rhetorical usage. The definition provided by Peacock and Kirsch - ‘culture is a system of logically related ideas and values by participants in a social system which in turn is a system of interacting roles and groups’ - is curious because it derives from notoriously conservative point of view provided by Talcott Parson's The Structure of Social Action (Peacock and Kirsch 1980: 21).

7 White's (1949: 122) attempt to identify symbols as the core feature of cultural is an exception.

8 Long ago cultural relativists rejected such all inclusive definitions of culture in favour of definitions that relied on more discriminating idealist factors, such as symbols, meanings, ideas, structuralism, mind, and the like.

9 By ‘material’ here I mean those ethnographic items that comprise material culture, not a causal force in evolution.

10 See Graber (2007) for a defense of the paradigm of cultural evolution against arguments that favour Darwinian and population genetic approaches to the paradigm. I concur with Graber on this issue, but my criticisms of the paradigm are founded on different premises.

11 Also see Service (1971: 12) for a similar evaluation.

12 Carneiro (2003: 27) alludes to this change in time and thinking about the idea of evolution.

13 Carneiro (2003) addresses many of Spencer's idea. All of Spencer's writings are available for perusal on line.

14 The most complete representation of ethnographic data is provided by the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). These data are most valuable when used to test theories quantitatively through statistical analyses. The HRAF deprives the anthropologist of the nuances between data and theory - praxis - that derives form the sensitivity for the ‘feel’ of the data, their context, relationship, impact and extent that is acquired by one's own endeavours to develop an ethnographic sample of one's choosing. The most valuable contributions to the evolution paradigm remain qualitative in their nomothetic impact.

15 The appendix attached to this paper is largely the result and demonstration of Cohen's ethnographic acumen. As a research assistant to Cohen, I collected data for some of his later projects (Cohen 1969). I also contributed to several of Claessen's subsequent volumes on the early state project.

16 The topics that comprise the appendix represent a modified and edited version of queries that was distributed by Y. A. Cohen in a graduate seminar on the Evolution of Culture, 1965.

17 The model and data also can explain the evolution of more specific concerns, such as governments and bureaucracies, social stratification, and religions and religious practitioners, and it also is amenable to inductive and deductive nomothetic applications

18 The narrative approach by which White (1959) addresses the general evolution of culture is an exception.

19 The ethnographic foundation of this model is presented best in various editions of Harris's (e.g., 1997) introductory textbook, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology. The emic and etic components of the model are available in Harris (1979: 51-54).

20 Roscoe (1993) suggested a third model for evolution. I do not discuss Ros-coe's idea because of lack of space, his minor role as a player in evolution theory, and because I have discussed it in detail elsewhere (Kurtz 2001: 150-153). Roscoe (1993), like so many others (Claessen 2000; Kurtz 2001, 2004; Grinin 2003, 2009; Korotayev 2008; Bondarenko 2005; Grinin and Korotayev 2009), was interested primarily in political evolution. His major contribution was the injection of the agent as motivating force in political evolution. I will return to that later.

21 See Kurtz (1996a) for the development of this idea and (Idem 1996b, 2001) for other applications of it.

22 At the time I am writing this, no better example of such a conflict could be found than that which is depicted by the goal of the Obama administration in the United States to effect health care reform and the resistance from others to those reforms.

23 Even though the CIM approaches evolution with different criteria, Claessen points out ‘There has to be a specific ‘context’, within which ... evolution takes place’ (2000: 155). I suggest that the idea of liminal spaces (discussed below) provides such a context for evolution.

24 Van Gennep (1960) distinguished three phases in a rite of passage: separation, transition (limen), incorporation. Turner (1974, 1979) has used the idea of the limen to explore other ritual contexts. I use the idea here to account for a factor in evolution.

25 If I am correct, this liminal phase contains the emerging social organizations of nascent world system of government.

26 Service (1960) referred to this dialectic as ‘the law of evolutionary potential’ which, most succinctly, argues that the more adapted a society is to its environment the more likely it will be to resist change.

REFERENCES

Adams, R. McC.

1966. The Evolution of Urban Society. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company.

Bennett, J. W.

1976. The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation. New York: Pergamon Press Inc.

Bondarenko, D. M.

2005. A Homoarchic Alternative to the Homoarchic State: Benin Kingdom of the 13th - 19th Centuries. Social Evolution & History 4(2): 18-88.

Bondarenko, D. M., Grinin, L. E., and Korotayev, A. V.

2002. Alternative Pathways to Social Evolution. Social Evolution & History 1(1): 54-80.

Buttigieg, J.

1987. Antonio Gramsci’s Triad: Culture, Politics, Intellectuals. Center for Humanistic Studies Occasional Papers, No. 10. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Humanistic Studies.

Callinicos, A.

1988. Making History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Carneiro, R. L.

1970. A Theory of the Origin of the State. Science 169: 733-738.

2002. Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? Social Evolution & History 1(1): 80-100.

2003. Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Cavalcanti, P., and Piccone, P. (eds.)

1975. History, Philosophy, and Culture in the Young Gramsci. St. Louis, MO: Telos Press.

Claessen, H. J. M.

1978. The Early State: A Structural Approach. In Claessen, H. J. M., and Skalnik, P. (eds.), The Early State (pp. 533-596). The Hague: Mouton Publishers.

2000. Structural Change: Evolution and Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology. Leiden: Research School CNWS, Leiden University.

2006. Developments in Evolutionism. Social Evolution & History 5(1): 3-41.

Claessen, H. J. M., Van de Velde, P., and Smith, E.

1985. Social Evolution. In Claessen, H. J. M., Van de Velde, P., and Smith, E. (eds.), Development and Decline: The Evolution of Sociopolitical Organization (pp. 246-263). South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.

Claessen, H. J. M., and Van de Velde, P. (eds.)

1987. Early State Dynamics. Leiden: Brill.

1991. Early State Economies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions.

Claessen, H. J. M., and Oosten, J. G. (eds.)

1996. Ideology and the Formation of Early States. Leiden: Brill.

Claessen, H. J. M., and Van Bakel, M.

2006. Themes and Variations: The Development of Differences in Polynesian Socio-Political Organization. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 162 (2-3): 218-268.

Cohen, Y. A.

1968a. Man in Adaptation: The Biosocial Background. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company.

1968b. Man in Adaptation: The Cultural Present. Chicago, IL: Al-dine Publishing Company.

1969. Ends and Means in Political Control: State Organization and the Punishment of Adultery, Incest, and Violation of Celibacy. American Anthropologist 71: 658-687.

1971. Man in Adaptation: The Institutional Framework. Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.

1983. A Theory and a Model of Social Change and Evolution. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2: 164-207.

Firth, R.

1951. Elements of Social Organization. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

1954. Some Principles of Social Organization. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 85: 1-18.

1957. We, the Tikopia. London: Allen & Unwin.

Fried, M. H.

1967. The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology. New York: Random House.

Giddens, A.

1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Goldschmidt, W.

1959. Man’s Way: A Preface to the Understanding of Human Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Graber, R. B.

1995. A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press.

2007. Bye-Bye, Baby! A Cultural Evolutionists Response to Evolutionary Culture Theorist's Complaints. Social Evolution & History 6(1): 3-28.

Gramsci, A.

1917. Philanthropy, Goodwill, and Organization. Avanti 24 (December).

1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers.

Grinin, L. E.

2003. The Early State and its Analogues. Social Evolution & History 2(1): 131-176.

2008. Early State, Developed State, Mature State: The Statehood Evolutionary Sequence. Social Evolution & History 7(1): 67-81.

2009. The Pathways of Politogenesis and Models of the Early State Formation. Social Evolution & History 8(1): 92-132.

Grinin, L. E., and Korotayev, A. V.

2009. The Epoch of Initial Politogenesis. Social Evolution & History 8(1): 52-92.

Hallpike, C. R.

1986. The Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Harris, M.

1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

1979. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Vintage Books.

1997. Culture, People, Nature: And Introduction to General Anthropology. New York: Longman.

Kirchoff, P.

1955. The Principles of Clanship in Human Society. Davidson Journal of Anthropology 1: 1-10.

1959 [1955]. The Principles of Clanship in Human Society. In Morton, H. F. (ed.), Readings in Anthropology. Vol. II. Cultural Anthropology. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

Korotayev, A. V.

2008. Trade and Warfare in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Social Evolution & History 7(2): 40-55.

Kroeber, A. L., and Kluckhohn, F.

1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Harvard University Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. Vol. 47. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum.

Kroeber, A. L., and Parsons, T.

1958: The Concepts of Culture and of Social System. American Sociological Review 23: 582-583.

Kurtz, D. V.

1974. Peripheral and Transitional Markets: The Aztec Case. American Ethnologist 1: 695-705.

1996a. Hegemony and Anthropology: Gramsci, Exegeses, Reinterpretations. Critique of Anthropology 16(2): 105-135.

1996b. Hegemonic Culturation and Work in State Formations. In Claessen, H. J. M., and Oosten, J. G. (eds.), Ideology and the Formation of Early States (pp. 278-297). Leiden: E. J. Brill.

2001. Political Anthropology: Paradigms and Power. Boulder, CO: Westview.

2004. The Evolution of Politics and the Transformation from Political Status to Political Role. Social Evolution & History 3(2): 150-175.

Leach, A. E.

1961. Rethinking Anthropology. New York: The Athlone Press.

Lenski, G. E.

1966. Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Lett, J.

1987. The Human Enterprise: A Critical Introduction to Anthropological Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Linton, R.

1936. The Study of Man: An Introduction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.

Lowie, R. H.

1948. Social Organization. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Morgan, L. H.

1963 [1877]. Ancient Society. Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company.

Peacock, J. L., and Kirsch A. T.

1980. The Human Direction: An Evolutionary Approach to Social and Cultural Evolution. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Ribeiro, D.

1968. The Civilizational Process. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Roscoe, P. B.

1993. Politics and Political Centralization: A New Approach to Political Evolution. Current Anthropology 34: 111-140.

Sahlins, M. D.

1958. Social Stratification in Polynesia. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Sahlins, M. D., and Service, E. R. (eds.)

1960. Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Service, E.

1960. The Law of Evolutionary Potential. In Sahlins, M. D., and Service, E. R. (eds.), Evolution and Culture (pp. 93-122). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

1962. Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective. New York: Random House.

1971. Cultural Evolutionism: Theory in Practice. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

1975. Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Spencer, H.

1851. Social Statics. London: John Chapman.

1857. Progress: Its Law and Cause. The Westminster Review 67: 445-485. st

1863. First Principle., 1st ed. London: Williams and Norgate.

1886. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

1896. First Principles. 4th ed. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Steward, J. H.

1949. Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations. American Anthropologist LI: 1-27.

1955. Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Stocking, G. W.

1974. The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boaz Reader. New York: Basic Books.

Turner, V.

1969. The Ritual Process. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company.

1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

1979. Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: A Study in Contemporary Symbology. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company.

Tyler, S. A.

1969. Introduction. In Tyler, S. A. (ed.), Cognitive Anthropology (pp. 1-23). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Tylor, E. B.

1871. Primitive Culture. London: John Murray.

Van Gennep, A.

1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

White, L. A.

1949. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

1959. The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

Wittfogel, K.

1957. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Appendix

Data Sheet

(Edited and adapted from a handout distributed by Dr. Y. A. Cohen, Seminar on Cultural Evolution, Department of Anthropology, University of California - Davis, 1965)

COVER PAGE GENERAL INFORMATION

Society/culture investigated (alternative names?)

Location:

Language:

Bibliography: identify time periods to which data refer:

Climate (arctic, tropical, etc.):

Elevation (in feet):

Rainfall: Mean annual__________Brief torrents_____Steady storms______

Soil quality:

General topography:

Availability of water:

Population density (seasonal variations if any):

Are these people the original settlers of the area or are they intruders into a settled area:

Describe the nature of the natural and artificial environment in which the people live:

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES

1. What is considered to be food by the people (anything that grows, moves, anything except totemic foods, only certain wild/domestic foods, etc.)

2. What is proportion (%) of the following to the total food supply:

Wild growing food_________Free ranging animals________Fish______Birds________

Domestic fowl__________Domestic plants________Domestic animals_______Products of

domestic animals_______Others (specify)_______

3. Adult men and women's (identify which) in terms of % of the following to the food supply:

Hunting, trapping_________Gathering___________Fishing______Fowling________Herding/grazing_______________________________________________________________Dairying_Basketry_Clearing land_Soil preparation______________________________________________________________________Planting_Care/protection of crops_Harvesting_Loafing_______________________________________________________________________ Care of children_Preparation of food for eating_Marketing_______________________________________________________________________Other (specify)_

4. Frequency of food shortages (none, weekly, monthly, etc.)________

5. If recurrent shortages, who is affected: Everyone___________ Children____

Elders___Younger adults____________Lower status individual___________Others (specify)_________________________________________________________________

6. Place of hunted animals in the economy:

List all animals hunted AND not hunted.

If hunted, what is the organization of personnel in the hunt for each animal? For each type of animal hunted, list apparatus (nets, etc.) and procedure (stalking, etc.) used.

7. Place of domestic animals in the economy

Identify all domesticates_____

Uses for domesticated animals:

Meat for consumption__________Regularly______Feasts only________

Products for consumption: Milk________________ Hides________ Horn_____ Others specify___________________________________________________________________

Domesticates used for:

Transportation______________ Hunting_ Warfare____________________ Prestige______ Exchange__________________________________________________________________________Others (specify)________________________

Protective enclosures of domesticates and from whom:

Securing domesticates: Breeding_______________ Trade_____________ Purchase______ Raiding________________________________________________________________________Other________________________________________

8. Instruments and means of production:

Arrows__________Spears_____________Bludgeons_________Guns________Poisons________Fishing gear________________________________________________________________________Digging stick/hoe_______________________Cutting brush_Burning brush_

Machines (identify kind)___________Metallurgy (identify metals)_______Animals (specify)__________________________________________________________________ Deliberate fertilization_ Plow_ Terracing_ Irrigation____________________________________________________________________________Deliberate crop rotation________________Reservation of substantial amounts of

flora________Fish_______Meat_______Others (specify)_________

9. Routine of productive activities:

Seasonal Migration___________with/without group fission_________(identify who is

involved)

Transhumance__________with/without fission________(identify who is involved)

Migrations________(why, where, permanency)

Shifts of village settlements______(frequency)

Permanent settlements________(no. of households, individuals, settlement pat-

tern)

10. Division of labor:

Formal/informal age groups/sets for Craft specialization (nature of craft)______

Caste specialization (specify)___________Regional specialization______ Guilds or

other associations______

11. Organization of labor: ego works most productively with:

Alone_______ Wife (wives)__________ Sons (all)________ Son (eldest)________________________________________ Sons

(younger)_________Bros sons________His sons and Bro sons_________Full bro________________________________________Half-

Bro_______Other kins (specify)___________Non-kin (specify)_______

12. Who is responsible for initiating a productive enterprise?

Leader/head (specify_______________Prestigious individual________ Owner of instruments of production______________________________________________Household head_Foreman_

13. Regulation of labor:

Corvee (purpose)________________ Wage work___________ Apprenticeship____________ Indenture____________________________________________________________________________Slave___________________________________Calendrical___Intercommunity (how/who)_

14. Goals of productive labor:

Subsistence primarily______________ Fulfil kin obligation________ Sale__________ Barter_____________________________________________________________________________Marriage Payments (dowry/bride payment)_Personal wealth_____________

Other (specify)_________

15. Extra-familial consumption:

Regular/recurrent exchange of equal amounts of food as part of subsistence_______

Regular/recurrent exchange of token amounts of food_____________

Equal distribution of hunted meat/fish among members of hunting party_______

Equal distribution of hunted meat/fish among members of the community______

Mutual assistance in times of need among kin, community regardless of kin_______

Reluctant sharing/no voluntary sharing_________

Loans with interest_________

Intercommunity barter/exchange__________

Purchase of staples, marketing__________

Inter-societal trade (e.g. Congo pygmy/horticulturalists, trading post, etc._____

Institutionalized trade (e.g. blood brothers)________

16. Foci of economic cooperation (e.g. production, distribution, planning,

etc.)____

17. Foci of economic competition (e.g. amassment, competitive generosity,

etc.)____

18. Indications of extreme wealth and poverty__________

19. Rationalizations for attachment to one form of livelihood over another,

such as, it is wrong to scratch mother earth or for an elite to dirty one's hands________

MARRIAGE, FAMILY, KINSHIP

1. Acquisition of spouses:

Bride price________ By whom given (groom, etc.) _____________ To whom given

(bride's fa, etc.)______

Dowry__________By whom given____________To whom given________

Suitor service_____How long_____________

Bride service______How long_____________

Exchange marriage___________

Marriage by capture______________ Mock capture____________ War booty__________ Abduction__________________________________________________________________________

Adoptive marriage___________

Elopement__________Wooing/courtship ending in marriage_____________

Concept of romantic love is part of courtship?_________

Cross cousin marriage___________Symmetrical__________Asymmetrical________

Possible_______Preferred__________Required_____________________Forbidden_

Parallel cousin marriage________

Possible_______Preferred__________Required___________Expressly forbidden______

Levirate_______Sororate_________

2. Marriage:

Monogamy only___________Polygyny permitted___________Polyandry permitted_________

3. Divorce:

Indications, if any, regarding frequency_____________

4. Household organization:

Independent nuclear family only_________with hangers-on____________

Extended family (with centralized control)___________

Extended family (without centralized control)__________

Independent polygynous family___________

Communal household (e.g. long house)_____________

Does household dissolve at death of head?____________

5. Rules of post-nuptial residence:

Patrilocal, bride changes community membership_______________

Patrilocal, bride does not change community membership_____________

Matrilocal, man changes community membership_________________

Matrilocal, man does not change community membership_______________

Avunculocal, man changes community membership________________

Avunculocal, man does not change community membership____________________

Ambilocal__________

Neolocal

Non-establishment of common residence______________

Other (describe)________

6. Marriage programming:

Arranged marriage____________

Go-betweens for prospective groom_____________

Formal negotiations between respective families____________

Consummation of marriage by birth of first child___________

Parental approval needed for marriage_________

Other's approval needed for marriage (e.g. bro, si, mobro)_________

Marriage programming entirely in hands of couple___________

Tendency for geographically close people to marry__________

Age-set determination of time at marriage__________

Permission granted by local chief________

Permission granted by paramount ruler_________

Individual minimum-age, achievement (e.g. vision) necessary for marriage________

7. Exogamy and endogamy:

All consanguines prohibited from marrying__________

Only members of descent group prohibited from marrying_____________

Member of descent group of some other consanguines forbidden to marry___________

All members of (territorial) community prohibited to marry_________

Nuclear family exogamy only___________

Territorial-community endogamy____________

Class endogamy__________

Caste endogamy__________

Religious endogamy___________

Ethnic endogamy_________

Other rules (describe)_______

8. Articulating rules of descent:

Patrilineal_____Matrilineal___________Double_______Bilateral_______

9. Kin-group organization:

Clan_______Localized_________Dispersed________

Lineage___________Localized______Dispersed_________

Sib________

Ramage__________

Bilateral kindred_______Solidary______Diffuse__________

Moieties________

Phratries_______

Are clans and/or lineages ranked in real______or mythical__________hierarchy of

Seniority and juniority______

10. Inheritance (identify for what items, statuses, titles, etc.):

Patrilineal_____Equal for sons________Primogeniture___________Preferred_____

Required________

Matrilineal___________Mo-Da______MoBr-SiSo___________Fa-So_________

Bilateral_______Equal for both sexes__________ Sons get more_______Daughters

get more________

Testamentary disposition_________But all sons must inherit_________But all sexes

must Inherit_________

Parent has right to disinherit a son______a daughter_______

11. Kinship terminology

Father-uncle, mother-aunt: generational_____________Lineal__________Bifurcate merging________________________________________________________________Bifurcate collateral_

Cousin terminology: Eskimo__________________ Hawaiian________ Iroquois________ Sudanese__________________________________________________________________________Omaha_Pattern inadequately described by any of the foregoing

(describe)___________

12. Family - authority relationships:

Household head's authority in day-to-day activities absolute, not subject to Authority outside household_________

Household head subject to others' authority in day-to-day activities__________

Who has this authority__________

13. Relationship between families:

Household's day-to-day relationships with consanguines most important

Household's relations with affinals most important___________

Household's relations with consanguines most important in other areas

(which)__________and most important with affinals in other areas (which)___________

Household's relations with consanguines and affinals equally important____________

Household's relations with kin and non-kin equally important_____________

Household's relations with non-kin more important than with kin_______________

Household isolated for about 6 months of the year____________

14. Relations between Br authority over Si and bond between Fa and So and

MoBr and SiSo (Use + and - based on Levi-Strauss Structural Anthropology,

pp. 40-51):

Fa-So_______ Hu-Wi_

MoBr-SiSo______________ Br-Si_

15. Child - household relationships:

Extrusion (i.e. child cannot sleep under the same roof with parents) during

first stage of puberty_______________For boys_____ For girls______Both sexes_______

Removal from the hh during the 2nd state of puberty, (e.g., under

the guise of an apprenticeship system)___________For boys_________For girls________Both

sexes________

Brother-sister avoidance________

16. Does a married woman receive an appreciable portion of her food supply

from a man other than her husband (e.g. from her Br, as in Trobriands)_____________if

yes, from whom__________

In polygynous household

Do co-wives have common store of food (e.g. granary)______________

Does each co-wife have hew own store of food_____________

Do co-wives have a common cooking place___________________

Does each wife have her own cooking facilities___________

17. Do kinsmen have automatic rights to each other's food________________ implements money_ land_ shelter_ if yes to any above, which

kinsmen__________

18. Are here any indications of economic separation between hu and wi (e.g. lending money with obligation to repay with or without interest, separate land holdings, separate money stores, etc.)

19. Avoidance relationships_________ With whom_______________

Joking relationships________ With whom_______

Respect relationships___________ With whom_______

20. Are there any indications as to regular points in the domestic cycle when households regularly fission (e.g. when offspring marry and go to reside neolocally, when eldest son leaves to establish his own productive household, etc.?)

21. To what extent are husband and wife roles interchangeable (e.g. both equal) in making same types of household decisions, can be equal in securing a livelihood for the family, can help in housework (e.g. washing dishes), taking care of children (e.g. changing and washing diapers, teaching children), entertain and visit together, etc.?

Table 2

Political organization

1 2' 3 4 5 6 7 8

State- Formation.

City

Wards

Religious enclaves

Ethnic enclaves

Caste enclaves

Class enclaves

Kin enclaves

Kin groups compact

Kin groups dispersed

Enclaves exogamous

Enclaves endogamous

Others, (specify)

Agamous local community (1000 to 1500 people)

Wards

Religious enclaves

Ethnic enclaves

Class enclaves

Kin enclaves

Kin groups compact

Kin groups dispersed

Enclaves exogamous

Enclaves endogamous

Others (specify)

Endogamous local community

Wards

Religious enclaves

Ethnic enclaves

Caste enclaves

Class enclaves

Kin enclaves

Kin groups compact

Kin groups dispersed

Enclaves exogamous

Enclaves endogamous

Others (specify)

Community made up of

Clans

Lineages

Segmentary lineages

Extended family household

Localized clan-community

Lineage

Segmentary lineages

Extended family household

Multi-family band

Family band

Other (specify)

Note: Questions for columns 1-8 are on next page.

Questions for Table 2 on the previous page (questions apply to all columns):

1. What is the most inclusive, maximal, or widest ranging groupings to which the individual meaningfully and actively belongs? Check one only.

2. Which are cephalous groupings of the society? (Check all that are relevant.)

3. Which of these cephalous groupings have more than one head (e.g. Swazi pa-ramountcy divided between King and Queen Mother, Plains India bands have a war chief and peace chief, etc.)?

4. Which group heads have non-derived - i.e. autonomous and undelegated -authority?

5. Which group heads have authority that is derived or delegated from a larger, more inclusive, or more powerful organization (e.g. local head man in a state formation)?

6. Which group heads have no authority in the fullest sense of the term but only prestige or, at most, episodic authority only for the moment or event?

7. To which group(s) is the individual expected to give political loyalty and allegiance?

8. Which is the most solidary grouping that, for the individual, is the most enduring, consistent, and important sphere of cooperation, reciprocity, and of mutual responsibility?

9. For state formations describe the composition of the paramountcy's council in terms of statuses (e.g. all are members of the paramountcy's lineage, each represents a component clan of the society, each represents a village, each represents a petty state, etc. (Describe the composition of local councils in the same terms.)

10. Are there periodic, regular, recurrent executions, sacrifices, slaughters or other killings of individuals? Or immolations, tortures, mass incarcerations? Where geographically are these carried out (in local community, central shrine, dispersed places like inquisitorial)?

FOR ALL SOCIETIES

11. Which grouping(s) in the society claim(s) the right of eminent domain?

Which grouping(s) or individual(s) claim(s) the prerogative of dispensing

rights in land to the individual?________

Who administers the system of land tenure (e.g. lineage head, clan chief, local headman, government bureaucracy)?________________

12. A person holds exploitative rights in land by virtue of membership in

good standing in a state formation ___________ city _______ community ___________ clan

_________lineage______band________extended family hh__________

A person can hold rights to land anywhere by virtue of having purchased it _________claimed it_______

13. At a man or woman's death his/her rights in land are inherited_________revert to the community as a whole_______________________________________________revert to the local headman_revert

to the paramountcy________lapse entirely_________

14. Tribute and taxation are:

Required to be given at stated intervals to a kin-group head________

Required to be given at stated intervals to the community headman___________

Required to be given at stated intervals to the paramountcy_________

Local headman is tax collector for the paramountcy__________

Paramountcy has specially designated tax collectors_________

Individual is expected to make ‘free gifts’ to head of kin group__________local

headman_________

15. List the acts for which a man or woman can be

Executed_________

Deprived of rights in land_______

Banished, exiled, etc._______

By whom?_____________

16. Is this a conquering_________conquered_______society, or neither?_________

17. Residence and mobility: A man ...

May settle in any community he wishes____________

Must secure permission from the paramountcy before changing residence_________

Must secure permission from local headman to leave a community____________

And permission of new local headman to settle in new community____________

May leave any community but must secure permission of new local headman

to settle there_______

Must secure consensus of community before settling there_________

Must, before settling in a community, secure rights in land from a clan chief

_________from a lineage head______

Can settle only where he receives rights in land from his father__________father

in law_______

May reside only in a community where his descent group is represented

May reside only in a community where his wife's descent group is represented_______

Must live where a central governmental authority directs him to live___________

18. Most married men appear to live ...

In their natal communities or neighborhoods___________

With consanguineal kinsmen, independent of natal origin___________

In communities other than those in which they were born___________

In one community during most of their lives___________

In two communities during most of their lives_________

In three or more communities during most of their lives___________

19. In the settlement of disputes, a man ...

Must accept the decision of formally constituted court________

Must accept the decision of a local headman___________

Must accept the decision of clan chief___________lineage head__________head of

an extended family hh_________

Must abide by the consensus of his community_____________

Relies on a group of kinsmen___________non-kin allies_________to enforce his de-

mands

Relies on the feud as the principal mechanism_________

Relies on his own power to enforce his demands___________

20. For each cephalous grouping, what are the rules of the succession to office?

21. Feud, vendetta, intergroup lex talionis is ... (check one)

Central to the maintenance of order_________

Frequent, but not central to the maintenance of order_________

Occasional_______

Rare, but present________

Prohibited_______by whom__________punishment for engaging in it____________

Absent, but no expressly prohibited_________

22. Witchcraft, sorcery is. (check one)

Central to the maintenance of order with identifiable sorcerers

Central to the maintenance of order without identifiable sorcerers_________

Present but not central to maintenance of order with identifiable sorcerers____

Present but not central to maintenance of order without identifiable sorcerers_

Prohibited________

Absent but not expressly prohibited_________

23. Communication:

Centrally controlled network of roads converging on central point and connecting most communities__________

Centrally controlled network of roads connecting most communities, but not

converging on central point_______

Highway robbery________________homicide___________punishable by death_______mutilation _______________________________________________________________________other (specify)_

Highways maintained by:

Corvee__________administered by local headman________centrally appointed

Personnel_______made up of age-sets_________

Permanent crews__________ administered by local headman____________ centrally

appointed personnel________made up of age grades__________

Market system centrally controlled and sponsored___________

Local autonomous markets___________ locally controlled by kin groups___________

communities__________regions______guilds_________

Market theft ______________ homicide_________ dishonesty in weights and measures_________________________________________

Punishable by death__________mutilation_____other (specify)____________

24. Intergroup relations are:

Inter-family__________inter-band________inter-tribal_______inter-lineage_______

inter-village________inter-ethnic_______inter-caste_______international_________

Essentially nonexistent and are really interpersonal_______

25. Describe briefly the nature of inter-community organization for all societies, e.g. nonexistent, primus inter pares, ritually governed, under treaty, diplomatic, part of central vertical system, etc.

26. Do political parties or political movements exist?________If yes, are opposition parties legitimate?_________________________________________

27. Significant political offices are vested in:

Men only__________at which levels_______

Mean and women___________at which levels_________

28. Military:

Standing professional (specialized) army_________centrally controlled__________

Units contributed in blocks by communities_____________kin groups______

Central national army made up of age sets____________centrally recruited_______

Units contributed in blocks by communities_____________kin groups______

RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION

1. Is there any broadly based social grouping associating in common rights and each subject to its own politico-jural authority that has deities associated with it only and with no other?

Grouping Number of deities Deity type (animal spirit, ancestor,

Impersonal spirits, etc.)

Household___________________________________________________________________

Band________________________________________________________________________

Congregation of bands_______________________________________________________

Lineage_____________________________________________________________________

Lineage segment_____________________________________________________________

Clan________________________________________________________________________

Village_____________________________________________________________________

Village segment_____________________________________________________________

Guild_______________________________________________________________________

Caste_______________________________________________________________________

Class_______________________________________________________________________

Other___________________________________________________________________

Nation______________________________________________________________________

Ruling class________________________________________________________________

Ruling lineage______________________________________________________________

Ruling clan_________________________________________________________________

Individual__________________________________________________________________

Commoner lineages_______________________________________________________

Commoner clan___________________________________________________________

Commoner villages_______________________________________________________

(If all the above spaces are left blank, it is assumed that this is a truly polytheistic society, that is, that there are as many deities in relation to which members of all groups in the society stand equally)______________

2. Who are the principal religious functionaries?

Every person his/her own religious functionary_______________band head___________lineage head__________________________________________________________________________clan head_village headman_paramount ruler_

paramount ruler plus specialized personnel_____________specialized personnel but not

the paramount ruler__________

3. If functionaries are heads of groups or specialized personnel, do they and the rest of religious company participate equally in ceremonies and ritual, or is

there an uneven distribution between functionaries and company?_____________What is

the distribution?________

4. Rituals carried out Types of deities Frequency of ritual Type of ritual

(see Q. 1) (daily, weekly, etc.) (see below *)

At natural residence of Deities (e.g. in forest)

Anywhere At hh shrines At local shrines Band

Multi band Congregation Lineage

Lineage segment

Clan

Village

Village segment City

Section/ward of city Other

At central national shrines At central and local shrines Local shrine regarded as

Derivative of central shrine Local shrine independent of Central shrine How many national shrines are there___________

Types of ritual (last column above), e.g. return of portion of food to the species deity, sacrifice of animals and/or food stuffs, dance, prayer, token gifts to deity, promises to perfume a deed for deity in return for favor, etc.

5. Are members of any dispersed groups required to reassemble on religious

ceremonial occasions_____________Which groups (from Q. 1,)_________________

6. Are human sacrifices performed at religious sites or shrine?____________

At which sites or shrines_____________

Do religious functionaries officiate at these sacrifices?_____________Which ones?

7. Note briefly whether religious personnel have political and/or jural responsibilities and/or influence

8. List all actions that incur punishment by deities and the nature of the punishment

9. Is the afterworld considered to be divided into a ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ or some other reward/punishment division?

10. Are there beliefs about reincarnation?__________What are they?______________

11. Is a language used in ritual that is different from the language of everyday use?_________

If yes, who understands this language?__________Or is it rote?__________

12. If there are specialized religious personnel and offices:

Are these jobs confined to member of particular classes?___________

(Which)____________________

Are these jobs sought as means of mobility within a class system?_______________

13. Is there religiously sponsored celibacy?____________

for men_________women__________both________

14. Is there any religiously sanctioned immolation?_________hair shirts______self

flagellation_____, drawing blood from oneself____________others (specify)____

Positive sanction__________Negative sanction____________If sanction is positive,

who is supposed to carry it out? (everyone, monks, priests, etc.)____________

15. Are women ever excluded systematically from religious ceremonies?___________

Are men excluded?__________Are children excluded?___________

16. Does the religion of this society purport to be a derivative of a ‘great tradition’, ‘international’, or other supra-community religion?____________If yes, how

different does this religion appear to be from its local form?_______________

SOCIAL CONTROL (LAW-JUSTICE)

1. What are the groupings (hh, clan, village, state formation, etc. - use Q.1

from the data sheet, ‘political organization’) in which pressures to conformity are most consistently brought to bear on the individual?_________________________________

2. For each of the groupings in Q. 1, note the types of pressures that are

brought to bear on the individual (e.g. threats of sorcery or accusation of sorcery, loss of cooperation with others. Loss of rights to land. Inquisition-type torture, etc. )______________________________

3. What actions by individuals elicit these pressures?_________________

4. For each of the groupings in Q. 1, note whether there are designated per-

sonnel for the enforcement of conformity (e.g., plains police, civil police, national police, village headmen, priests, etc.___________________

5. Where are decisions reached to apply pressures to conformity?

In dyadic relations exclusively_________________________________________

In extended family hh___________________________________________________

Clan head acting at behest of family hh head____________________________

Lineage head acting at behest of extended family hh head________________

Local headman acting at behest of extended family hh head___________________

Band leader acting on own initiative________________________________________

Hh head acting on own initiative____________________________________________

Lineage head acting on own initiative_______________________________________

Clan chief acting on own initiative_________________________________________

Village council acting on behest of complainant_____________________________

Courts (which, see q. 6 below) acting on complaint__________________________

Other (specify)_____________________________________________________________

6. Courts:

Local autonomous courts________________________________

Independent of other bodies____________________________

Are also religious bodies______________________________

Are also village councils______________________________

Are also clan councils_________________________________

Are circuits or branches of state judiciary____________

Nation courts only_____________________________

Is there appeal from decisions of those above?_________________

If so, from which_______________to which_______________

Which of the courts have ritualized, formal, stereotyped procedures?

Are there specialized lawyers?_______________________________

7. Does local system contain the principle of joint liability_________________or

only individual (several) liability?______________________

If joint liability exists, to which action does it apply?________________

And which kinsmen are involved?___________________________________

8. Are there any actions (e.g. treason, homicide) for which a culprit's nuclear family are punished (executed, deprived of his/her property as a result of confiscation as part of punishment) in addition to the culprit?

Culprits actions Type of punishment

Family of orientation____________________________________________________

Family of procreation____________________________________________________

9. Are there any types of sexual behavior that are punishable or actionable?

Type of behavior Type of punishment

By males_________________________________________________________________

By females_______________________________________________________________

10. What are the consequences for an individual who refuses to work?

11. What are the beliefs about and consequences for a person who prefers to be alone most of the time?

12. What are the beliefs about and consequences for a person who

Strikes his father________

Strikes his mother________

Strikes his brother_______

Strikes a chief___________

13. What are the consequences for failure to pay debts because of

Refusal to pay____________

Inability to pay__________

14. If there are initiation ceremonies, what are the consequences for refusal to undergo initiation (e.g. inability to secure a spouse, shunning, exclusion from jural-political rights, etc.)?

15. Are there explicit consequences for heresy, blasphemy, impiety, etc.?

Which___________

16. What persons or places have the power of sanctuary?

Do these protect against agents of formal jural authority or only against private foes?

17. Are there any concepts or terms which suggest being un-(name of society), e.g. Ka-hopi, un-American, etc.?______________

If yes, what are the consequences of its application to a person (e.g. execution, excommunication, ostracism, etc.)?

18. Are there rituals of rebellion?____________

In regard to which loci of authority?___________________________________

19. Are there any types or sources of conflict in which it is explicitly clear

that a person cannot count on the support of his parents or siblings?_________________

EDUCATION

1. Are there schools?______

If yes:

At what age do boys_________girls________begin attendance?

Are teachers kin of students_____nonkin?___________

Are teachers male___________female_______both?_________

From which social strata in population are teachers drawn?__________

From which strata are students drawn?__________________

What is general nature of the curriculum (vocational, military, religious, etc.)?

To what extent are schools tied to formal initiation ceremonies (e.g. bush schools)?

What are consequences formal/informal consequences for not attending school?____________

What is maximum number of years a person can devote to formal schooling?

Are schools an indigenous institution_________or where they introduced by

conquering________or dominant outsiders?___________

Who sponsors schools (e.g. local community, kin group, central government, etc.)?

2. Are there any areas of competence or knowledge (e.g. religious lore, economic techniques, myths that are regularly taught to Boys_____________Girls________

By kinsmen other than parents (which)_______By non-kinsmen?_______________

3. Are there any bogey-men (demons, devils, etc.) with whom children are

threatened For disobedience__________(Nature of the bogeys)?______________

4. Does any kins-man have the right to discipline a child____________or only

certain Kinsmen (which)?_____________

5. Does any member of the community (kin or non-kin) have the right to discipline a Child?________________

6. Are there any extra-familial institutions (e.g. courts) that have the right

(even theoretically) to enforce discipline and conformity in children?________

7. Are there initiation ceremonies of boys____girls_______both?______

8. Are there puberty ceremonies for boys______girls_______both_______

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

1. Is this society stratified into a systems of social classes (minimum consideration: differential degrees of control over mean of production, rights of dispossession by members of one status level over another of land or sea rights, consistent differential access to wealth, confinement of political offices to members of particular statuses, etc.)?

If yes:

How many status levels exist and what are they?______________________

Is class status ascribed_______________or achieved?________________

Is there a caste system________________how many castes?_____________________

What is the relationship between class and kin-group membership?

What is the relationship between class and occupation, e.g. (are high status

persons freed from productive responsibilities)?___________________

Are village headmen drawn from a particular class____________if yes, which?___________

Are status levels endogamous___________required__________preferred?_________

Are there different jural rights for different status levels (e.g. inequality before the law)?_________________________

Is there an etiquette in inter-status relations (e.g. bowing, formal language,

adjusting veils, etc.)___________if yes, what occurs?______________

What is the punishment for lower-status persons who infringe on the rights of upper-status persons?

Are there life crisis rites for different statuses____if yes, describe?_______________

Are there special schools for different statuses __________________ if yes, describe?

What means of production are controlled by different classes?_______________________

If yes, how is control exercised (e.g. ownership of land, distribution of jobs,

right timpose tapu on crops, etc.)?________________________________________

What acts lead to dispossession from rights to land/sea by one status or another?

What forms of wealth typically accrue to different statuses?

Is the system of classes religiously re-enforced (e.g. by system of mana-tapu)?

Are classes residentially segregated__________if yes, what is the pattern?

Are there irrigation works of system?_________if yes:

Are they controlled by members of different classes?______________

If yes, how (e.g. organizing labor corvee, overseeing repairs, controlling cal-endrical flooding, selling rights to use water, etc.)?

Is there a standing military organization____________if yes, is control in hands of

particular classes________if yes, which classes?

Are there class insignia or dress?____________if yes, describe_____________

What other features of the class system may exist?

2. If this is not a class-stratified society, which of the following sources of prestige serve as criteria for ranking? (SORT THEM NUMERICALLY INSTEAD OF MERELY CHECKING THEM)

Social influence ______________

Reputation ______

Accumulated wealth ____________

Military bravery ______________

Religious abilities ___________

Number of children ____________

Generosity is distributing wealth_____________

Knowledge of lore _____________

Technical-specialized knowledge_______________

Esoteric knowledge ____________

Political status/office________

Un-aggressiveness______________

Aggressiveness___________

Other (specify)________________

3. What are the material symbols of prestige (e.g. medals, houses, etc.)?

4. What are the emoluments of prestige (e.g. power, personal satisfaction, access to other desiderata, etc.)?

5. Are some occupations considered more prestigious than others?__________________if

yes, which______

6. Does slavery exist?__________if yes for war captives______debt_________crime___

serfdom_________

Rights and privileges of slaves: can hold property___________marry________contract

for debt_____purchase freedom_________win freedom_________

Does rational ideology of culture claim that the society is completely egalitarian?

STABILITY AND CHANGE

1. Are there any regularly and recurrently performed rituals when reenact the

creation of the universe and the society (e.g. Navaho curing ceremony, Hopi Powamu, etc.)?__________

If yes, are they designed to maintain the universe and society in original form?

Are these rituals religious_____or secular?_________

2. Controlling change: To oppose change To favor change

Appeals made to:

Ancestors_________________________________________________________________

Other deities_____________________________________________________________

Tradition_________________________________________________________________

Social charters (e.g. Magna Carta, constit.)______________________________

Immediate real pressures/demands (what/which)_____________________________

Other_____________________________________________________________________

3. Introduction, acceptance, rejection of innovation, new idea, techniques, procedures etc., appear to be in the hands of (WHERE POSSIBLE DESCRIBE):

Polity as a whole_________________________________________________________

Shaman____________________________________________________________________

Chief_____________________________________________________________________

Council of elders_________________________________________________________

Lineage heads_____________________________________________________________

Clan heads________________________________________________________________

Village headmen___________________________________________________________

Village council___________________________________________________________

Religious functionaries___________________________________________________

Paramount ruler___________________________________________________________

Segments of government (e.g. legislature, supreme court)__________________

Quasi official branch of govt. (e.g. a political party)___________________

Broadly based portion of population (e.g. scientists, inventors, W. African

Lorry Drivers, etc.)____________________________________________________________

Legitimate elite (e.g. prophets, philosophers)____________________________

Alien society_____________________________________________________________

Other_____________________________________________________________________

4. What are the lines of communication or announcement for innovations (e.g. informal interpersonal speeches by chiefs, from national bureaucracy to provincial representatives, edict, statute, mass media, etc.)?

5. In what sphere(s) of activity does change normally occur first (e.g. technology, kinship system, jural relations, political system, clothing, language, etc.)?

6. Briefly describe values related to change (good, bad, indifferent, work of devil, all change is faddist, etc.).