ANTH1220 - Chapter 11 - Political Systems

Types of Political Organization

- Bands (small, informal): small loosely organized groups of people held together by informal means. -Tribes (some degree of formalization of structure, associations, age grades): societies with some degree of formalization of structure and leadership, including village and intervillage councils whose members regularly meet to settle disputes and plan community activities. - Chiefdoms (stratified societies organized by kinship): Formal governmental systems organized by kinship. - States (highly organized, centralized, hierarchical): Highly organized, centralized political systems with a hierarchical structure of authority.

Features of a State Society

- centralized government, hierarchical structure of authority - bureaucratic administrative functions, state control of redistributive services - social stratification, class and status differentiation - territorial districts, urbanization, monumental architecture - state control of law and punishment - state monopoly over military force, used internally as police and externally as an army - regulation of social relations, marriage, and family - delineation of rights and obligations of citizenship - labor specialization, integrative networks of communication and transportation -ideological support through religious and social ideologies

China's One Child Policy

An example of forced change (1979) Advocates: delayed marriage, delayed child bearing, fewer and healthier births, one child per couple Exceptions: ethnic minorities, child parents (4 years apart), mental or physical issues with first child

Non-Sociopolitical Organization

Associations: sociopolitical groups that link people in a community on the basis of shared interests and skills. Age-grade (age set): A sociopolitical association of people of more or less similar age who are given specific social functions.

Examples of internal political change and state societies

Includes: - Terrorism - Factionalism: The tendency for groups to split into opposing parties over political issues, often a cause of biolence and a threat to political unity. - Revolution: an attempt to overthrow the existing government

Characteristics of State Societies

Includes: - cities - large populations - specialists - social control

Social Issues of China's One Child Policy

Issues include: - overwhelmingly prefer male children, female infanticide - unauthorized forced abortions sometimes with second child pregnancies, may include late-term abortions - reports of mass sterilization in rural areas

Types of State Societies

Republics - elected authority rather than inherited leadership Empires - Expanded into larger units through conquest and the occupation or annexation of new territories Theocracies - rules by religious leaders, in which the social order is upheld through beliefs in its divine origins or sanction

Political Anthropology

The study of ways that communities plan group actions, make decisions affecting the group, select leadership, and resolve conflicts and disputes both within the group and with other groups

Political Organization

The ways in which societies are organized to place group activities, make decisions affecting members of the group, select leadership and settle disputes within the group and with other groups.