Non-State

Hello Readers. I’m sure that, as you’ve seen in my posts recently, I have been obsessed with modern-day non-state societies and Neolithic groups. It has helped me understand how humans work for political knowledge and has helped me center my own politics and morals.

               I’ll start with my credentials. They aren’t much. As I stated in my last post, I took classes in anthropology: Intro to Anthropology, Anthropology of War, and Archeology of Death. The last two have metal band names. So, I won’t claim to be an expert in the least, but I do know some of the basics. For starters, most of what I learned was about non-state societies, which are smaller and usually decentralized. These societies include bands, tribes, and chiefdoms, which increase in size in the same order as stated. These societies can have a number of methods of gathering food. There are, of course, hunter-gatherers. Then, there are horticulturalists who will farm an area until the soil is no longer usable and then move to a different area and farm there. Then there is pastoralism, where a group follows a herd of animals. Then, there are groups that solely get their food by fishing. Then there is agriculture, which is a society that will stay in one area and farm the land. This is a simplification as there are societies that can use a combination of these methodologies to obtain food but would have a main one. Chiefdoms and Tribes could be any of these. States can only be agricultural, and Bands can only be hunter-gatherers. These groups are usually a number of families that follow a Big Person, which is a term for a leader of those groups. These Big people wield political power in a number of ways, such as violence, gift-giving, social maneuvering, and popularity.  There are, of course, groups that hold other powers and people who challenge these leaders. A tribe and chiefdom can also have multiple Big People.

               I am so interested in these groups because they show how we have always had complex relations with other humans, our identity, and the world we’ve been born into. It has also made it easier for me to conceptualize how people can be politically intelligent as, ultimately, it is a natural trait in humans that can be trained and bettered and not some foreign construct that must be learned. I also conceptualize social groups in the form of these societies since it explains how people interact within their own circle and other groups. What I mean by this is that a person living in a small town’s tribe is the people within that town. This person will either be or have a Big Person in their life that directs them (It is not good or bad to be the Big Person or to follow a Big Person). This Big person can be a family member, friend, politician, or boss. The role of the state is that all these Big People, in turn, acknowledge the ruling person or group of the state as the Big Person who they will follow. This is seen in Chiefdoms and tribes that will join together to achieve a common goal. So, either we or our Big People recognize the U.S. government as our leaders.

               I use this understanding of non-state societies to understand group dynamics and storytelling better, too. I can see how certain motives and actions are taken to reassert connections and roles between friends whose guidance is shared with one another. With the advent of the internet, this all changes. We are no longer limited by our space in between each other. We are more choosers of who and what we are willing to follow than people were before us. We have more opportunities to lead as well. We live in a whole different landscape, and we haven’t even seen the surface of it yet.