Man the rest of that post was large but very interesting. I will start
at the beginning and differentiate between the "big man" and the
"Chief" in the former one leads because he has the best ideas and
methods, in the latter one leads because of family line and power.
Life Without Chiefs By Marvin Harris
Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? To
look at the modern world, you wouldn’t think so. Democratic states may
have done away with emperors and kings, but they have hardly dispensed
with gross inequalities in wealth, rank, and power.
However, humanity hasn’t always lived this way. For about 98 percent
of our existence as a species (and for four million years before
then), our ancestors lived in small, largely nomadic hunting-and-
gathering bands containing about 30 to 50 people apiece. It was in
this social context that human nature evolved. It has been only about
ten thousand years since people began to settle down into villages,
some of which eventually grew into cities. And it has been only in the
last two thousand years that the majority of people in the world have
not lived in hunting-and-gathering societies. This brief period of
time is not nearly sufficient for noticeable evolution to have taken
place. Thus, the few remaining foraging societies are the closest
analogues we have to the “natural” state of humanity.
To judge from surviving examples of hunting-and-gathering bands and
villages, our kind got along quite well for the greater part of
prehistory without so much as a paramount chief. In fact, for tens of
thousands of years, life went on without kings, queens, prime
ministers, presidents, parliaments, congresses, cabinets, governors,
and mayors--not to mention the police officers, sheriffs, marshals,
generals, lawyers, bailiffs, judges, district attorneys, court clerks,
patrol cars, paddy wagons, jails, and penitentiaries that help keep
them in power. How in the world did our ancestors ever manage to leave
home without them?
Small populations provide part of the answer. With 50 people per band
or 150 per village, everybody knew everybody else intimately. People
gave with the expectation of taking and took with the expectation of
giving. Because chance played a great role in the capture of animals,
collection of wild foodstuffs, and success of rudimentary forms of
agriculture, the individuals who had the luck of the catch on one day
needed a handout on the next. So the best way for them to provide for
their inevitable rainy day was to be generous. As expressed by
anthropologist Richard Gould, “The greater the amount of risk, the
greater the extent of sharing.” Reciprocity is a small society’s bank.
In reciprocal exchange, people do not specify how much or exactly what
they expect to get back or when they expect to get it. That would
besmirch the quality of that transaction and make it similar to mere
barter or to buying and selling. The distinction lingers on in
societies dominated by other forms of exchange, even capitalist ones.
For we do carry out a give-and-take among close kin and friends that
is informal, uncalculating, and imbued with a spirit of generosity.
Teenagers do not pay cash for their meals at home or for the use of
the family car, wives do not bill their husbands for cooking a meal,
and friends give each other birthday gifts and Christmas presents. But
much of this is marred by the expectation that our generosity will be
acknowledged with expression of thanks.
Where reciprocity really prevails in daily life, etiquette requires
that generosity be taken for granted. As Robert Dentan discovered
during his fieldwork among the Semai of Central Malaysia, no one ever
says “thank you” for the meat received from another hunter. Having
struggled all day to lug the carcass of a pig home through the jungle
heat, the hunter allows his prize to be cut up into exactly equal
portions, which he then gives away to the entire group. Dentan
explains that to express gratitude for the portion received indicates
that you are the kind of ungenerous person who calculates how much you
give and take: “In this context, saying ‘thank you’ is very rude, for
it suggests, first, that one has calculated the amount of a gift and,
second, that one did not expect the donor to be so generous.” To call
attention to one’s generosity is to indicate that others are in debt
to you and that you expect them to repay you. It is repugnant to
egalitarian peoples even to suggest that they have been treated
generously.
Canadian anthropologist Richard Lee tells how, through a revealing
incident, he learned about this aspect of reciprocity. To please the !
Kung, the “bushmen” of the Kalahari desert, he decided to buy a large
ox and have it slaughtered as a present. After days of searching Bantu
agricultural villages for the largest and fattest ox in the region, he
acquired what appeared to be a perfect specimen. But his friends took
him aside and assured him that he had been duped into buying an
absolutely worthless animal. “Of course, we will eat it,” they said,
“but it won’t fill us up--we will eat and go home to bed with stomachs
rumbling.” Yet, when Lee’s ox was slaughtered, it turned out to be
covered with a thick layer of fat. Later, his friends explained why
they had said his gift was valueless, even though they knew better
than he what lay under the animal’s skin:
“Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as
a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants
or inferiors. We can’t accept this, we refuse one who boasts, for
someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of
his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him
gentle.”
Lee watched small groups of men and women returning home every evening
with the animals and wild fruits and plants that they had killed or
collected. They shared everything equally, even with campmates who had
stayed behind and spent the day sleeping or taking care of their tools
and weapons.
“Not only do families pool that day’s production, but the entire camp--
residents and visitors alike--shares equally in the total quantity of
food available,” Lee observed. “The evening meal of any one family is
made up of portions of food from each of the other families resident.
There is a constant flow of nuts, berries, roots, and melons from one
family fireplace to another, until each person has received an
equitable portion. The following morning a different combination of
foragers moves out of camp, and when they return late in the day, the
distribution of foodstuffs is repeated.”
In small, pre-state societies, it was in everybody’s best interest to
maintain each other’s freedom of access to the natural habitat.
Suppose a !Kung with a lust for power were to get up and tell his
campmates, “From now on, all this land and everything on it belongs to
me. I’ll let you use it but only with my permission and on the
condition that I get first choice of anything you capture, collect, or
grow.” His campmates, thinking that he had certainly gone crazy, would
pack up their few belongings, take a long walk, make a new camp, and
resume their usual life of egalitarian reciprocity. The man who would
be king would be left by himself to exercise a useless sovereignty.
THE HEADMAN: LEADERSHIP, NOT POWER
To the extent that political leadership exists at all among band-and-
village societies, it is exercised by individuals called headmen.
These headmen, however, lack the power to compel others to obey their
orders. How can a leader be powerful and still lead?
The political power of genuine rulers depends on their ability to
expel or exterminate disobedient individuals and groups. When a
headman gives a command, however, he has no certain physical means of
punishing those who disobey. So, if he wants to stay in “office,” he
gives few commands. Among the Eskimo, for instance, a group will
follow an outstanding hunter and defer to his opinion with respect to
choice of hunting spots. But in all other matters, the leader’s
opinion carries no more weight than any other man’s. Similarly, among
the !Kung, each band has its recognized leaders, most of whom are
males. These men speak out more than others and are listened to with a
bit more deference. But they have no formal authority and can only
persuade, never command. When Lee asked the !Kung whether they had
headmen--meaning powerful chiefs--they told him, “Of course we have
headmen! In fact, we are all headmen. Each one of us is headman over
himself.”
Headmanship can be a frustrating and irksome job. Among Indian groups
such as the Mehinacu of Brazil’s Zingu National Park, headmen behave
something like zealous scoutmasters on overnight cookouts. The first
one up in the morning, the headman tries to rouse his companions by
standing in the middle of the village plaza and shouting to them. If
something needs to be done, it is the headman who starts doing it, and
it is the headman who works harder than anyone else. He sets an
example not only for hard work but also for generosity: After a
fishing or hunting expedition, he gives away more of his catch than
anyone else does. In trading with other groups, he must be careful not
to keep the best items for himself.
In the evening, the headman stands in the center of the plaza and
exhorts his people to be good. He calls upon them to control their
sexual appetites, work hard in their gardens, and take frequent baths
in the river. He tells them not to sleep during the day or bear
grudges against each other.
COPING WITH FREELOADERS
During the reign of reciprocal exchange and egalitarian headmen, no
individual, family, or group smaller than the band or village itself
could control access to natural resources. Rivers, lakes, beaches,
oceans, plants and animals, the soil and subsoil were all communal
property.
Among the !Kung, a core of people born in a particular territory say
that they “own” the water holes and hunting rights, but this has no
effect on the people who happen to be visiting and living with them at
any given time. Since !Kung from neighboring bands are related through
marriage, they often visit each other for months at a time and have
free use of whatever resources they need without having to ask
permission. Though people from distant bands must make a request to
use another band’s territory, the “owners” seldom refuse them.
The absence of private possession in land and other vital resources
means that a form of communism probably existed among prehistoric
hunting and collecting bands and small villages. Perhaps I should
emphasize that this did not rule out the existence of private
property. People in simple band-and-village societies own personal
effects such as weapons, clothing, containers, ornaments, and tools.
But why should anyone want to steal such objects? People who have a
bush camp and move about a lot have no use for extra possessions. And
since the group is small enough that everybody knows everybody else,
stolen items cannot be used anonymously. If you want something, better
to ask for it openly, since by the rules of reciprocity such requests
cannot be denied.
I don’t want to create the impression that life within egalitarian
band-and village societies unfolded entirely without disputes over
possessions. As in every social group, nonconformists and malcontents
tried to use the system for their own advantage. Inevitably there were
freeloaders, individuals who consistently took more than they gave and
lay back in their hammocks while others did the work. Despite the
absence of a criminal justice system, such behavior eventually was
punished. A widespread belief among band-and-village peoples
attributes death and misfortune to the malevolent conspiracy of
sorcerers. The task of identifying these evildoers falls to a group’s
shamans, who remain responsive to public opinion during their
divinatory trances. Well-liked individuals who enjoy strong support
from their families need not fear the shaman. But quarrelsome, stingy
people who do not give as well as take had better watch out.
FROM HEADMAN TO BIG MAN
Reciprocity was not the only form of exchange practiced by egalitarian
band-and-village peoples. Our kind long ago found other ways to give
and take. Among them the form of exchange known as redistribution
played a crucial role in creating distinctions of rank during the
evolution of chiefdoms and states.
Redistribution occurs when people turn over food and other valuables
to a prestigious figure, such as a headman, to be pooled, divided into
separate portions, and given out again. The primordial form of
redistribution was probably keyed to seasonal hunts and harvests, when
more food than usual became available.
True to their calling, headmen-redistributors not only work harder
than their followers but also give more generously and reserve smaller
and less desirable portions for themselves than for anyone else.
Initially, therefore, redistribution strictly reinforced the political
and economic equality associated with reciprocal exchange. The
redistributors were compensated purely with admiration and in
proportion to their success in giving bigger feasts, in personally
contributing more than anybody else, and in asking little or nothing
for their effort, all of which initially seemed an innocent extension
of the basic principle of reciprocity.
But how little our ancestors understood what they were getting
themselves into! For if it is a good thing to have a headman give
feasts, why not have several headmen give feasts? Or, better yet, why
not let success in organizing and giving feasts be the measure of
one’s legitimacy as a headman? Soon, where conditions permit, there
are several would-be headmen vying with each other to hold the most
lavish feasts and redistribute the most food and other valuables. In
this fashion there evolved the nemesis that Richard Lee’s !Kung
informants had warned about: the youth who wants to be a “big man.”
A classic anthropological study of big men was carried out by Douglas
Oliver among the Siuai, a village people who live on the South Pacific
island of Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands. In the Siuai language,
big men were known as mumis. Every Siuai boy’s highest ambition was to
become a mumi. He began by getting married, working hard, and
restricting his own consumption of meats and coconuts. His wife and
parents, impressed with the seriousness of his intentions, vowed to
help him prepare for his first feast. Soon his circle of supporters
widened and he began to construct a clubhouse in which his male
followers could lounge about and guests could be entertained and fed.
He gave a feast at the consecration of the clubhouse; if this was a
success, the circle of people willing to work for him grew larger
still, and he began to hear himself spoken of as a mumi. Larger and
larger feasts meant that the mumi’s demands on his supporters became
more irksome. Although they grumbled about how hard they had to work,
they remained loyal as long as their mumi continued to maintain and
increase his renown as a “great provider.”
Finally the time came for the new mumi to challenge the older ones. He
did this at a muminai feast, where both sides kept a tally of all the
pigs, coconut pies, and sago-almond puddings given away by the host
mumi and his followers to the guest mumi and his followers. If the
guests could not reciprocate with a feast as lavish as that of the
challengers, their mumi suffered a great social humiliation, and his
fall from mumihood was immediate.
At the end of a successful feast, the greatest of mumis still faced a
lifetime of personal toil and dependence on the moods and inclinations
of his followers. Mumihood did not confer the power to coerce others
into doing one’s bidding, nor did it elevate one’s standard of living
above anyone else’s. In fact, because giving things away was the
essence of mumihood, great mumis consumed less meat and other
delicacies than ordinary men. Among the Kaoka, another Solomon Islands
group, there is the saying, “The giver of the feast takes the bones
and the stale cakes; the meat and the fat go to the others.” At one
great feast attended by 1,100 people, the host mumi, whose name was
Soni, gave away thirty-two pigs and a large quantity of sago-almond
puddings. Soni himself and some of his closest followers went hungry.
“We shall eat Soni’s renown,” they said.
FROM BIG MAN TO CHIEF
The slide (or ascent?) toward social stratification gained momentum
wherever extra food produced by the inspired diligence of
redistributors could be stored while awaiting muminai feasts,
potlatches, and other occasions of redistribution. The more
concentrated and abundant the harvest and the less perishable the
crop, the greater its potential for endowing the big man with power.
Though others would possess some stored-up foods of their own, the
redistributor’s stores would be the largest. In times of scarcity,
people would come to him, expecting to be fed; in return, he could
call upon those who had special skills to make cloth, pots, canoes, or
a fine house for his own use. Eventually, the redistributor no longer
needed to work in the fields to gain and surpass big-man status.
Management of the harvest surpluses, a portion of which continued to
be given to him for use in communal feasts and other communal projects
(such as trading expeditions and warfare), was sufficient to validate
his status. And, increasingly, people viewed this status as an office,
a sacred trust, passed on from one generation to the next according to
the rules of hereditary succession. His dominion was no longer a
small, autonomous village but a large political community. The big man
had become a chief.
Returning to the South Pacific and the Trobriand Islands, one can
catch a glimpse of how these pieces of encroaching stratification fell
into place. The Trobrianders had hereditary chiefs who held sway over
more than a dozen villages containing several thousand people. Only
chiefs could wear certain shell ornaments as the insignia of high
rank, and it was forbidden for commoners to stand or sit in a position
that put a chief’s head at a lower elevation. British anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski tells of seeing all the people present in the
village of Bwoytalu drop from their verandas “as if blown down by a
hurricane” at the sound of a drawn-out cry warning that an important
chief was approaching.
Yams were the Trobrianders’ staff of life; the chiefs validated their
status by storing and redistributing copious quantities of them
acquired through donations from their brothers-in-law at harvest time.
Similar “gifts” were received by husbands who were commoners, but
chiefs were polygymous and, having as many as a dozen wives, received
many more yams than anyone else. Chiefs placed their yam supply on
display racks specifically built for this purpose next to their
houses. Commoners did the same, but a chief’s yam racks towered over
all the others.
This same pattern recurs, with minor variations, on several
continents. Striking parallels were seen, for example, twelve thousand
miles away from the Trobrianders, among chiefdoms that flourished
throughout the southeastern region of the United States--specifically
among the Cherokee, former inhabitants of Tennessee, as described by
the eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram.
At the center of the principal Cherokee settlements stood a large
circular house where a council of chiefs discussed issues involving
their villages and where redistributive feasts were held. The council
of chiefs had a paramount who was the principal figure in the Cherokee
redistributive network. At the harvest time a large crib, identified
as the “chief’s granary,” was erected in each field. “To this,”
explained Bartram, “each family carries and deposits a certain
quantity according to his ability or inclination, or none at all if he
so chooses.” The chief’s granaries functioned as a public treasury in
case of crop failure, a source of food for strangers or travelers, and
as military store. Although every citizen enjoyed free access to the
store, commoners had to acknowledge that it really belonged to the
supreme chief, who had “an exclusive right and ability…to distribute
comfort and blessings to the necessitous.”
Supported by voluntary donations, chiefs could now enjoy lifestyles
that set them increasingly apart from their followers. They could
build bigger and finer houses for themselves, eat and dress more
sumptuously, and enjoy the sexual favors and personal services of
several wives. Despite these harbingers, people in chiefdoms
voluntarily invested unprecedented amounts of labor on behalf of
communal projects. They dug moats, threw up defensive earthen
embankments, and erected great log palisades around their villages.
They heaped up small mountains of rubble and soil to form platforms
and mounds on top of which they built temples and big houses for their
chief. Working in teams and using nothing but levers and rollers, they
moved rocks weighing fifty tons or more and set them in precise lines
and perfect circles, forming sacred precincts for communal rituals
marking the change of seasons.
If this seems remarkable, remember that donated labor created the
megalithic alignments of Stonehenge and Carnac, put up the great
statues on Easter Island, shaped the huge stone heads of the Olmec in
Vera Cruz, dotted Polynesia with ritual precincts set on great stone
platforms, and filled the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi valleys
with hundreds of large mounds. Not until it was too late did people
realize that their beautiful chiefs were about to keep the meat and
fat for themselves while giving nothing but bones and stale cakes to
their followers.
IN THE END
As we know, chiefdoms would eventually evolve into states, states into
empires. From peaceful origins, humans created and mounted a wild
beast that ate continents. Now that beast has taken us to the brink of
global annihilation.
Will nature’s experiment with mind and culture end in nuclear war? No
one knows the answer. But I believe it is essential that we understand
our past before we can create the best possible future. Once we are
clear about the roots of human nature, for example, we can refute,
once and for all, the notion that it is a biological imperative for
our kind to form hierarchical groups. An observer viewing human life
shortly after cultural takeoff would easily have concluded that our
species was destined to be irredeemably egalitarian except for
distinctions of sex and age. That someday the world would be divided
into aristocrats and commoners, masters and slaves, billionaires and
homeless beggars would have seemed wholly contrary to human nature as
evidenced in the affairs of every human society then on Earth.
Of course, we can no more reverse the course of thousands of years of
cultural evolution than our egalitarian ancestors could have designed
and built the space shuttle. Yet, in striving for the preservation of
mind and culture on Earth, it is vital that we recognize the
significance of cultural takeoff and the great difference between
biological and cultural evolution. We must rid ourselves of the notion
that we are an innately aggressive species for whom war is inevitable.
We must reject as unscientific claims that there are superior and
inferior races and that the hierarchical divisions within and between
societies are the consequences of natural selection rather than of a
long process of cultural evolution. We must struggle to gain control
over cultural selection through objective studies of the human
condition and the recurrent process of history. Not only a more just
society, but our very survival as a species may depend on it.
http://online.chabotcollege.edu/kwaldo/in_common/Life%%20Without%%20Chiefs%%20By%%20Marvin%%20Harris...
http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=63;action=display;threadid=3229...
Our Kind - Marvin Harris
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Kind-Where-Came-Going/dp/0060919906
