Key points
Bands to states
Political anthropology is power without assuming a Parliament.
- Dunbar: ~150 stable ties; beyond that, offices and rules thicken.
- Service: band → tribe → chiefdom → state. Band leaders suggest camps, cannot command.
- Tribe: several bands, shared culture, segmentary lineage (Nuer; leopard-skin chief mediates without a police).
- Age-grades (Kipsigis, Maasai): warriors and elders as political machinery without a king.
- Melanesian big-man: achieved feasts, not blood office. Polynesian chief: mana, hierarchy, subchiefs.
- State: monopoly of legitimate force (Weber); Fried — stratification made permanent; Cohen — offices and law.
| Form | Leadership | Force |
|---|---|---|
| Band | First among equals | Shame, leaving |
| Tribe | Lineage, age-set | Feud, ritual |
| Chiefdom | Hereditary centre | Tribute, mana |
| State | Specialists | Law and army |
Concepts
Power, law, control
- Long-distance trade theories (Wright & Johnson): bureaucracy to protect caravans.
- Lukes’s three faces; Foucault’s discipline and panoptic self-policing — use lightly in a 10-marker.
- Simple-society control: kinship, shame, outcasting (Maasai teaching), restoration more than prison.
- Evans-Pritchard: state vs stateless on power, leadership, law, force, territory, history.
- Maine: status to contract as a modern-law story — too neat for caste India, still a quote.
WRAP Exams coaching notes for UPSC Anthropology optional. Pair with the official syllabus when you need every heading in order.