Revision summary
Social control matches political scale. Foragers use gossip and fission. Nuer feud and peacemakers show tribal control. Chiefs add tabu and tribute. States add law and legitimate force, while custom and caste still operate.
Model answer
Introduction
Social control is how a public makes people keep rules. The mechanism changes with scale: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state do not use the same mix of shame, feud, and law.
Body
Uncentralised systems
- In bands, gossip, ridicule, and fission work. Turnbull’s Mbuti and many forager ethnographies show walking away as a sanction.
- Tribal segmentary systems use feud and the leopard-skin peacemaker, as Evans-Pritchard showed for the Nuer. Age-sets and lineage councils, as among the Maasai or Indian Naga village morungs, bind youth.
- Radcliffe-Brown called this the maintenance of social structure. Malinowski stressed reciprocal obligation in the Trobriands more than a court.
Centralised systems
- Chiefdoms add ranked offices and tribute. Hawaiian and African chiefships used ritual tabu and redistribution.
- States add written law, police, and tax. Weber’s monopoly of legitimate force is the extreme. Customary law may still sit under the code, as in Indian panchayats beside the IPC.
Cross-cutting tools
- Religion, witchcraft accusation, and caste ostracism control without a policeman. Durkheim’s sanction and Foucault’s discipline name two later readings of the same field.
- Modern NGOs and social media add new shame, but they do not erase kinship control in the village.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD B[Band shame fission] --> T[Tribe feud council] T --> C[Chiefdom rank tribute] C --> S[State law force] X[Witchcraft religion caste] --> T X --> S
Conclusion
Bands control by exit and shame, tribes by feud and council, chiefdoms by rank and rite, states by law and force. Anthropology studies the mix, not a single ladder of progress.
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