Jackson Kuhl attempts to take on his fellow TCS Daily contributor Max Border's assertion that humans have an instinct for egalitarianism due to our long period of evolution in band societies, something that I posted on here. Kuhl does us a service by pointing out a quote from one of my favorite archaeologists, Kent Flannery (and his wife collaborator, Joyce Marcus)
" ..."egalitarian," as used by ethnologists, describes a society in which prestige is achieved or earned, not inherited.
In other words, it matters what you do, not what your mom or dad did.
They continue:
"Individuals in egalitarian societies can acquire prestige through advanced age, personal accomplishment, or the accumulation of valued goods. ...
"Unfortunately, many archaeologists have taken 'egalitarian' to mean 'homogenous.' They assume that people in such societies are as alike as coins made at the same mint, and when — as inevitably happens — they find evidence for heterogeneity, they wrongly conclude that they have discovered a 'chiefdom.' Which is to say, a culture stratified by lineage-based classes."
This is exactly right. In egalitarian band societies there are leaders and followers, people who are (relatively) rich or poor, and people who are admired or despised. In these societies with few numbers of individuals, everyone knows everyone and all about them. The "egalitarian impulse" that Borders speaks of comes about because there is consensus in band societies that people who have prestige have earned it. In modern society we all know of many people with prestige who haven't earned it, and Borders believes the rage and envy many of us feel towards these undeserving winners are hard-wired into us.
Kuhl stumbles a bit when he uses the examples of radical heirarchies in Tewa and Chimbu societies as a contradiction of Border's thesis. As Elman Service shows in Primitive Social Organization, societies come in four levels of increasing social complexity: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Border's stresses that we have spent 95% of our time as a species in the lowest level of bands. The Tewa and Chimbu have already climbed to advanced tribal level and are an inaccurate point of comparison.
2 comments:
This argument strikes me as a classic instance of setting up an argument in a way that determines the outcome has to be chosen from a limited set of alternatives when the reality might be controlled by something entirely different, outside the limits of the question. Certainly when dealing with historical small groups like "Indians," the prestige of the family (or band which could be an extended family) is more important than any one individual. Because the highest value is survival and the only entity that CAN survive is the family. Going through a long period of poverty also amps up the prestige of the family, which can protect its own but will abandon "outsiders." People who try to figure out reservations tend to ignore all this and look for "chiefs" like those poor early soldiers charged with getting signers to "treaties." Important people were people with strong families. We have largely abandoned this in contemporary America, mostly. (But consider Bush or Kennedy. We probably OUGHT to look at them as part of powerful families -- they could not have become presidents on their own merits. Even either Roosevelt...)
This argument strikes me as a classic instance of setting up an argument in a way that determines the outcome has to be chosen from a limited set of alternatives when the reality might be controlled by something entirely different, outside the limits of the question. Certainly when dealing with historical small groups like "Indians," the prestige of the family (or band which could be an extended family) is more important than any one individual. Because the highest value is survival and the only entity that CAN survive is the family. Going through a long period of poverty also amps up the prestige of the family, which can protect its own but will abandon "outsiders." People who try to figure out reservations tend to ignore all this and look for "chiefs" like those poor early soldiers charged with getting signers to "treaties." Important people were people with strong families. We have largely abandoned this in contemporary America, mostly. (But consider Bush or Kennedy. We probably OUGHT to look at them as part of powerful families -- they could not have become presidents on their own merits. Even either Roosevelt...)
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