Political anthropology

Political anthropology concerns the structure of political systems, looked at from the basis of the structure of societies. Political anthropologists include Pierre Clastres, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Georges Balandier, F.G. Bailey, Jeremy Boissevain, Marc Abélès, Ted C. Lewellen, Robert L. Carneiro, John Borneman and Joan Vincent.

Political anthropology has its roots in the 19th century. At that time, thinkers such as Lewis H. Morgan and Sir Henry Maine tried to trace the evolution of human society from 'primitive' or 'savage' societies to more 'advanced' ones. These early approaches were ethnocentric, speculative, and often racist. Nevertheless, they laid the basis for political anthropology by undertaking a modern study inspired by modern science, and in particular Darwin. In a move that would be influential for future anthropology, they focused on kinship as the key to understanding political organization, and emphasized the role of the 'gens' or lineage as an object of study.

Contemporary political anthropology can be traced back to the 1940 publication African Political Systems, edited by Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard. They rejected the speculative historical reconstruction of earlier authors and argued that "a scientific study of political institutions must be inductive and comparative and aim solely at establishing and explaining the uniformities found among them and their interdependencies with other features of social organization". Their goal was taxonomy: to classify societies into a small number of discrete categories, and then compare them in order to make generalizations about them. The contributors of this book were influenced by Radcliffe-Brown and structural functionalism. As a result, they assumed that all societies were well-defined entities which sought to maintain their equilibrium and social order. Although the authors recognized that "Most of these societies have been conquered or have submitted to European rule from fear of invasion. They would not acquiesce in it if the threat of force were withdrawn; and this fact determines the part now played in their political life by European administration" the authors in the volume tended in practice to examine African political systems in terms of their own internal structures, and ignored the broader historical and political context of colonialism.

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