💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › brian-morris-people-without-government.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:02:50. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: People Without Government Author: Brian Morris Date: 2007 Language: en Topics: AJODA, AJODA #63, anthropology, critique, history, sovereignty Notes: Originally published in “Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed” #63. Spring/Summer, 2007, Vol. 24., No. 2.
Western social science and eco-philosophy are perennially torn between
two contradictory images of the human species. One, associated with
Thomas Hobbes (1651), sees human social life as a “war against all,” and
human nature as essentially possessive, individualistic, egotistic and
aggressive, it is a basic tenet of the “possessive individualism” of
liberal political theory (MacPherson 1962).The other, associated with
Rousseau, depicts human nature in terms of the “noble savage” — of the
human species as good, rational, and angelic, requiring only a good and
rational society in order to develop their essential nature (Lukes 1967:
144–45). Both these ideas are still current and have their contemporary
exemplars. In the writing of many ecofeminists and Afrocentric scholars,
a past Golden Age is portrayed — in which peaceful social relations,
gender equality, and a harmony with nature were the rule — before the
rise respectively of bronze age culture and colonialism (Eisler 1987,
Diop 1989). Both these images share a similar theoretical paradigm which
sees human relations as solely “determined by some natural state of
human beings” (Robarchek 1989: 31). The contributors of the volume
Societies at Peace (Howell and Willis 1989) all eschew, along with
Robarchek, this biological determinism, and emphasise an approach that
dispenses with “universalistic definitions,” suggesting that human
behaviour is never culturally neutral, but always embedded in a shared
set of meanings. Yet they argue strongly that “sociability” is an
inherent capacity of the human species, and all the essays tend towards
the tradition of Rousseau. But countering biological and deterministic
approaches to culture should not lead us to endorse an equally one-sided
cultural (or linguistic) determinism that completely oblates biology.
Anthropologists’ past contribution to political science focuses
specifically on two important fields. One is in outlining the politics
of societies without centralised governments; studies by Malinowski on
the Trobriand Islands and Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer have become
classics. The other is in the analysis of micro-politics, particularly
of political leadership, village politics, and the relationship between
politics and symbolism (Bailey 1969, A Cohen 1974).
Order and power are intrinsic to social life. A human society has, by
definition, both order and structure, and operates with regularised and
relatively fixed modes of behaviour. Humans without society are not
human, for society is basic to the human condition, as Marx long ago
insisted (see also Carrithers 1992). So is power.
Power is a relationship, and implies the ability to get others to do
what you want them to do. Power may mean influence — convincing others
by monetary rewards, by logical argument, or by the prestige of one’s
status. Or it may mean coercion — the implied or overt threat of injury.
But power is intrinsic to any social group. The question for anarchists,
therefore, is not whether there should be order or structure, but
rather, what kind of social order there should be, and what its sources
ought to be. Equally, anarchists are not Utopians who wish to abolish
power, for they recognise that power is intrinsic to the human
condition. As Bakunin expressed it:
All men possess a natural instinct for power which has its origin in the
basic law of life enjoining every individual to wage a ceaseless
struggle in order to insure his existence or to assert his rights.
(Maximoff 1953: 248)
What anarchists strive for is not the abolition of power but its
diffusion, its balance, so that ideally it is equally distributed
(Barclay 1982: 16–18). The notion that anarchists endorse unlimited
freedom, as Andrew Heywood suggests (1994: 198) is a serious
misunderstanding of anarchism. Anarchism does not imply license; rather
it repudiates coercive power.
Authority, as Weber long ago explored (1947), is power that is
considered legitimate by members of a community. But, as Barclay
stresses, such legitimacy may be more in terms of “tacit acquiescence”
rather than in the unconditional acceptance of power, and, citing Morton
Fried, he notes that legitimacy is the means by which ideology is
harnessed to support power structures.
The function of legitimacy is “to explain and justify the existence of
concentrated social power wielded by a portion of the community and to
offer similar support to specific social orders, that is, specific ways
of apportioning and directing the flow of social power” (Fried 1967:
26). All human societies, therefore, have political systems, but not all
have government, for the latter is but one form of political
organisation.
In the preface to the classic survey African Political Systems (1940),
A.R. Radcliffe Brown defines political organisation as “maintenance or
establishment of social order, within a territorial framework, by the
organised exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the
possibility of use, of physical force” (xiv). He went on to suggest that
the political organisation of a society “is that aspect of the total
organisation which is concerned with the control and regulation of the
use of force”(xxiii).
Such a definition, which is clearly derived from Weber in its dual
stress on territory and coercive force, essentially refers to
government, and is thus too limiting as a definition of politics. Weber
had defined power \macht\ as the “probability that one actor within a
social relation will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance,” and defined a group as political “if and in so far as the
enforcement of its order is carried out continuously within a given
territorial area by the application and threat of physical force”
(1947:152–54).
Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, in their introduction to African Political
Systems, found such definitions of politics too restrictive, and noted
that ethnographers who, like themselves, studied such societies as the
Nuer and Tallensi — societies which lacked centralised authority — were
forced to consider “what, in the absence of explicit forms of
government, could be held to constitute the political structure of the
people” (1940: 6). In the study a simple division is made between two
main categories of political system, those societies having centralised
systems of authority — that is, having a government or state (societies
such as the Bemba or Zulu), and those societies which lack centralised
authority, such as hunter-gatherers and the aforementioned Tallensi and
Nuer.
Although acknowledging that there is an intrinsic connection between
people’s culture and their social organisation, Fortes and
Evans-Pritchard emphasise that these two components of social life must
neither be confused nor conflated. They note that culture and type of
political system vary independently of one another, and that there is no
simple relation between modes of subsistence and a societies’ political
structure. But they acknowledge that, in a general sense, modes of
livelihood determine the dominant values of a people and strongly
influence their social organizations, including their political systems.
They suggest that wide divergencies in culture and economic pursuit may
be incompatible with what they describe as a “segmentary political
system,” characteristic of the Nuer, Tallensi and the Logoli. In the
latter system there is no administrative organisation or government, and
the local community, not the state, is the key territorial unit.
Membership in the local community they suggest, is acquired as a rule
through genealogical ties, whether real or fictitious, and they write:
The lineage principle takes the place of political allegiance, and the
interrelations of territorial segments are directly co-ordinated with
the interrelation’s lineage segments. (11)
The simple equation of politics with hierarchy and coercive power was
also challenged by Pierre Clastres in his classic study Society against
the State (1977). Like Barclay, Clastres belongs to a long anarchist
tradition that goes back to the end of the Eighteenth century. The study
is focused on the “leader as servant and the human uses of power among
the Indians of the Americas.” The book is appropriately entitled Society
against the State, for, like Tom Paine and the early anarchists,
Clastres makes a clear and unambiguous distinction between society and
the state, and suggests that the essence of anarchic societies, whether
hunter-gatherers or early Neolithic peoples, is that effective means are
institutionalised to prevent power being separated from social life.
The classical definition of political power in the Western intellectual
tradition, evident in the writings of Nietzsche and Weber, as well as
those by anthropologists, put a fundamental emphasis on control and
domination. Power is always manifested within “a relationship that
ultimately comes down to coercion...the truth and reality of power
consists of violence” (1977: 4). The Western model of political power,
which stems from the beginning of Western civilisation, tends to see
power in terms of “hierarchized and authoritarian relations of command
and obedience” (9). Such a viewpoint, Clastres argues, is ethnocentric,
and immediately leads to puzzlement by ethnologists when they confront
societies without a state, or without any centralised agencies. Such
societies are conceptualized as missing something, as incomplete, as
lacking...a state. In social contexts where there is neither coercion
nor violence, is it then possible to speak of political power? Scholars
have thus been led to describe power in the Trobriand Islanders or such
societies as the Nilotic people of the Sudan as being “embryonic” or
“nascent” or as “undeveloped.” History is then seen as a one-way street,
with Western culture as the image of what “societies without power will
eventually become.” But Clastres contends that there are no human
societies without power. What we have is not a division between
societies with power and societies without power (stateless societies) —
for “political power is universal, immanent to social reality” (14) —
but rather a situation in which power manifests itself in two modes —
coercive and non-coercive. Political power is thus inherent in social
life; coercive power is only a particular type of power.
Clastres notes how the first European explorers to South America were
bemused and bewildered in describing the political life of the Tupinamba
Indians — “people without god, law or king” — but felt at home in the
hierarchic states of the Aztecs and Incas, with their coercive and
hierarchic political systems. For Clastres, then, political power as
coercion or violence is the stamp of historical societies, and it is the
political domain itself which constitutes the first motor of social
change.
In examining the philosophy of the Indian chieftainship, Clastres argues
that the chiefs lacked any real authority, and that most Indian
communities of South America, apart from the Incas, were distinguished
by “their sense of democracy and force for equality” (20). Reviewing the
ethnographic literature, Clastres suggests that four traits
distinguished the chief among the forest tribes of South America.
Firstly, the chief was a peace-maker, responsible for maintaining peace
and harmony within the group, though lacking coercive power. His
function was that of pacification, and only in exceptional
circumstances, when the community faced external threat, was the model
of coercive power adopted. Secondly, the chief must be generous with his
possessions; as Clastres quotes from Francis Huxley’s study of the
Urubu, you can always recognise a chief by the fact that he has the
fewest possessions and wears the shabbiest ornaments (22). Thirdly, a
talent for oratory, Clastres suggests, is both a condition and an
instrument of political power, such oratory being focused upon the
fundamental need of honesty, peace, and harmony within a community.
Fourthly, in most South American societies, polygamous marriage is
closely associated with chiefly power, and it is usually the chief s
prerogative, although successful hunters may also have polygamous
marriages. As polygamy is found among both the nomadic Guayaki and
Siriono, hunter-gatherers in which the band rarely numbers more than 30
persons, and among sedentary farmers like the Guarani and Tupinamba,
whose villages often contain several hundred people, polygamy is not an
institution that is linked to demography, but is rather linked to the
political institution of power.
All these traits are fundamental expressions of what constitutes the
basic fabric of archaic society, namely that of exchange. Coercive
power, Clastres suggests, is a negation of this reciprocity. Accepting
Murdock’s contention that the atavism and aggressiveness of tribal
communities has been grossly exaggerated, Clastres highlights the
importance of marriage alliances, especially cross — cousin marriages,
in establishing multi-community structures. He refers to these as
“polydemic structures” (53). He also emphasises that among the Guayaki
(Ache) foragers there is a fundamental opposition between men and women,
whose economic activities form two separate but complementary domains,
the men hunting and the women gathering. Two styles of existence are
thus seen to emerge, focused on the cultural opposition between the bow
(for hunting) and the basket (for carrying), which evokes specific
reciprocal prohibitions. Importantly, for the Guayaki hunter, there is a
basic taboo that categorically forbids him from partaking of the meat
from his own kill. This taboo, Clastres suggests, is the founding act of
an exchange of food which constitutes the basis of Guayaki society.
Clastres emphasises the fact that a subsistence economy did not imply an
endless struggle against starvation but rather an abundance and variety
of things to eat, and that, as with the Kalahari hunter-gatherers, only
three or four hours were spent each day in basic subsistence tasks — as
work. These communities were essentially egalitarian, and people had a
high degree of control over their own lives and their work activities.
He argues that the decisive break between archaic and historical
societies was not the neolithic revolution, and the advent of
agriculture, but rather stems from a “political revolution,” the
emergence of the state. The intensification of agriculture implies the
imposition, on a community, of external violence. But such a state
apparatus is not derived, Clastres argues, from the institution of
chieftainship, for in archaic societies the chief “has no authority at
his disposal, no power of coercion, no means of giving an order” (174).
Chieftainship thus does not involve the functions of authority. Where
then does political power come from? Clastres tentatively suggests that
the origins of the state may derive from religious prophets, and
concludes by noting that while the history of historical society may be
the history of class struggle, for people without history it is “the
history of their struggle against the state” (186).
The key point of Clastres’ analysis, later confirmed by John Gledhill
(1994: 13–15), is that it provides a critique of western political
theory which tends to identify political power with violence and
coercion, as well as highlighting an important lesson to be derived from
anthropology, namely that it is possible for societies to be organised
without any division between riders and theuruled, between oppressors
and the oppressed. It also suggests that we look at history not in terms
of typologies, but rather as an historical process where, within
specific regions, societies with states have co-existed with stateless
populations .which have endeavoured to maintain their own autonomy and
to resist the centralising intrusions and exploitation inherent in the
state; (Gledhill 1994:15). It is also worth noting that anarchists have
always made a distinction, long before Deleuze, between organisation and
order imposed from above.
An important tradition within anthropology has been to interpret the
political systems of non-capitalist societies in terms of typologies
that are essentially taxonomic and descriptive. Following the earlier
neo-evolutionary approach to politics, associated with Service (1962)
and Fried (1967), Lewellen (1992) has suggested four types of political
systems, based on their mode of political integration.
The band-type of political organisation is characteristic of
hunter-gathering societies like the !Kung of the Kalahari, the Inuit of
Northern Canada, and the Mbuti of Zaire, as well as of all prehistoric
foragers.
Tribes Although Lewellen notes the problematic nature of the concept of
“tribe,” he advocates the use of the term on both logical and empirical
grounds. In evolutionary terms there must be some political term that is
midway between the band level of political organisation associated with
hunter-gatherers, and centralised political systems. Cross cultural
systems also reveal certain features which tribal societies have in
common, although they also show wide variations with respect to the
existence of age-sets, pan-tribal sodalities, and ritual associations.
Lewellen outlines the political in three tribal contexts, that of the
Kpelle, the Yanomamo, and the Nuer, and also considers the Iroquois as
examples of this type of political system.
Chiefdoms transcend the tribal level in having some form of centralised
system and a higher population density made possible by more efficient
productivity. There may be a ranked political system, but no real class
differentiation. Lewellen describes the Kwakiutl and pre-colonial
Hawaiians as being typical chiefdoms.
Finally, there is the state-level of political integration, which
implies specialised institutions and centralised authority in order to
maintain, through coercive force, differential access to resources. The
key feature of the state is its permanence. Lewellen gives a descriptive
outline of the pre-colonial Inca and Zulu states.
In an important review of the literature, Marvin Harris (1993)
emphasises the salience of bio-sexual differences in the understanding
of gender hierarchy in human societies. The basic differences between
men and women, in terms of stature, musculature, and reproductive
physiology, provides, he suggests, a “starting point” in attempting to
understand gender. Cultural determinism therefore does not counsel us to
ignore biology, and nor does the emphasis on biological difference imply
a simple biological determinism such that “anatomy is destiny.”
Such biological differences, Harris suggests, are clearly related to one
of the most ubiquitous features of early human societies — both
contemporary hunter-gatherers and prehistoric foragers — namely the
division of labour by sex. With few exceptions, such as that of the Agta
of Luzan — where women hunt wild pigs and deer with knives and bows and
arrows (cf. Dahlberg 1981) — among hunter-gatherer societies men are the
primary hunters of large game. They thus become specialists in the
making of hunting weapons, such as bows and arrows, spears, harpoons,
boomerangs and clubs — weapons that could also be used to injure or kill
other humans. But the association of men with hunting, and with the
control of weapons, did not necessarily entail gender hierarchy. There
is plenty of evidence to suggest that among many foragers (and some
subsistence cultivators) the sexual division of labour is complementary,
and gender relations are essentially egalitarian, as Clastres implied.
Also, in early human communities, scavenging and group hunting by all
members of the community was probably widespread (Ehrenreich 1997).
Harris cites the studies of Leacock (1983) among the Montagnais-Naskapi
foragers of Labrador, Colin Turnbull’s (1982) studies of the Mbuti of
Zaire, and Shostak’s (1981) biography of Nisa, a !Kung woman, to
indicate that women in foraging societies have a high degree of
autonomy, and that egalitarian relations between the sexes is the norm.
But Harris deems that gender roles in foraging societies aren’t
completely complementary and egalitarian, for in their role as healers,
and in the realm of public decision making, men often tend to have a
significant edge over women in almost all foraging contexts (1993: 59).
Although organised violence is not found among the IKung of the
Kalahari, Harris argues that they are by no means the “peaceful
paragons” as depicted by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas in her book The
Harmless People (1958). Violent arguments frequendy occur, and homicide
is not unknown.
Significantly, Richard Lee found that in 34 cases of inter-personal
conflict over a five year period — half of which involved domestic
dispute between spouses — it was the man who initiated the attack in the
majority of cases, and of the 25 cases of homicide, though the victims
were mainly men, all the killers were also men (Lee 1979: 453). Citing
one comparative study (Hayden et al 1986), Harris suggests that where
conditions entail the development of feuding among hunter-gatherers,
then this correlates with an increased emphasis on male dominance — for
then a warrior ethic and male aggressiveness is given cultural
prominence.
Warfare is organised conflict involving teams of armed combatants; among
the !Kung however, such warfare did not exist, and there was a virtual
absence even of raiding. This is consonant with a situation where gender
equality is the norm. Yet, as Harris suggests, many band societies
engage in inter-group warfare to varying degrees, and thus possess
well-developed forms of gender hierarchy. He also cites the ethnographic
accounts of the Australian aborigines, although also noting that in
these societies women had a considerable degree of independence.
Besides an ethos of sharing, complementary gender rites, and a general
level of gender equality among foraging societies (see Woodburn 1982,
Kent 1993), there is also an important emphasis on consensus. This is
clearly brought out in George Silberbauer’s essay on the G/wi (1982).
The G/wi of the Central Kalahari, Botswana, were studied by Silberbauer
between 1958–66, when they were still primarily autonomous hunters and
gatherers. Since then, the region has been increasingly penetrated by
Tswana and Kgalagadi pastoralists.
The social and political community of the G/wi is the band, which is
conceptualised in terms of a group of people living in a specific
territory and controlling the use of its resources. Membership of the
band is primarily through kinship and marriage, but membership is open
and not exclusive, so non-G/wi can become members. Within the band there
is movement and flux, and a continuing pattern of separation and
integration between the various householders that constitute it. This
enables the local group to successfully exploit environmental resources.
To do this, Silberbauer suggests, political processes must be
“integrative without weakening inter-household dependence which would
cripple the autonomy” of the household — for people’s survival depends
on this autonomy. Kinship, which has universalistic properties, is
important in ordering relationships within the band.
Decisions affecting the band as a whole are arrived at through
discussions, involving all adult members. Such discussions tend to be
informal, and seldom take the form of set-piece public debates. Disputes
and arguments are addressed in public, but these are done indirectly, as
direct confrontation between opposing individuals is seen as a breach of
etiquette. During the summer and autumn, joint camps are formed, but
these are unstable groupings, and their composition is always based on a
preference for one another’s company. These groupings — or “cliques” as
Silberbauer calls them — form an ephemeral segmentation of the band.
Leadership of the band is evident at all phases of decision making,
which is initiated by someone identifying or communicating a problem
that needs a resolution.
Leadership is apparent to the degree that someone’s suggestion or
opinion attracts public support, and it shifts according to context or
relevant expertise. Public decisions cover a wide field, ranging from
domestic disputes to the location of the next camping site. Decisions
are essentially arrived at by consensus, but this by no means entails a
unanimity of opinion or decision. It rather implies a situation where
there is no significant opposition to a proposal. All members of the
band have the opportunity to participate in the decision. As consensus
implies an element of consent, it negates the notion of coercion — and
the general openness of the band as a social unit prevents coercive
factions from emerging.
Silberbauer thus concludes that the style of band politics is
facilitative rather than coercive, and leadership is authoritative
rather than authoritarian, an individual striving for the co-operation
of others in the activities they may wish to undertake. He distinguishes
such consensus politics from a democracy — which involves equal access
to positions of legitimate authority, and is essentially an
organisational framework for the making and execution of decisions.
Silberbauer suggests that the common definition of political action in
terms of coercive power or physical force, suggested by Weber (1947:
154) and Radcliffe-Brown (1940: xxiii), noted above, is too narrow and
selective, and is inappropriate in the context of consensus politics. It
leads, he suggests, “to the paradox that, as there is no locus of power,
such a polity has no authority. This is, of course, nonsense for it is
the very fact of consensus which lends authority to the decision” (1982:
33). A second context discussed by Harris is that of village organised
societies, where subsistence is derived in part from rudimentary forms
of agriculture, and where armed raiding is almost endemic. The two
classic contexts are the Yanomami of Venezuela — the subject of
important studies by Chagnon (1968) and Lizot (1985), and the village
communities of the New Guinea highlands. The Yanomami, described as the
“Fierce People” by Chagnon, train boys from an early age to become
warriors, to be courageous, cruel and vengeful. Young boys learn their
aggression and cruelty by practising on animals. Armed raids are
undertaken at dawn on rival villages, and women taken as captives.
Successful men are polygamous, and there is a pervasive pattern of
ill-treatment towards women, who are beaten and harassed. About a third
of the deaths in some Yanomami villages result from armed combat, and
the overall homicide rate is high — five times greater that of the !Kung
(Knauft 1987: 464).
The abuse and mistreatment of women is equally evident among many New
Guinea communities, who, according to Harris, are the “world’s most
ardent male chauvinists” (1993: 65). The central institution of these
societies, the Nama, a male initiation cult; essentially trains men to
be fierce warriors, and to subordinate women. Among the Sambia, as
described by Gilbert Herdt (1987), there is a rigid segregation of the
sexes, the men being engaged in fighting and hunting, the women tending
to the pigs, and doing what Herdt describes as the routine cultivating
of the gardens. Men avoid all contact with children, and fear intimacy
with women, their main activities being focused around the secret male
clubhouse. Through complex initiations boys become members of what Herdt
calls a “clan-based warriorhood,” centred on a local hamlet. Through
ritual fellatio, semen is passed from men to boys, and the loss of semen
through heterosexual activities is feared — as contact with women is
believed to be polluting. Sexual antagonism is therefore characteristic
of Sambia relationships, and constitutes for them a psychological
reality. Hie co-ordinating institution of this patrilineal society is
the men’s secret society; it is a dominating force in Sambia social
life, and an instrument of political and ideological control of men over
women.
But not all village-based communities that practise horticulture — with
hunting as an important subsidiary activity — are characterised by male
dominance and an ethic of violence.
Joanna Overing (1989) brings these two contrasting perspectives together
in “Styles of Manhood,” her account of the Shavante and Piaroa,. The
Shavante of Central Brazil, also studied by Maybury-Lewis (1971), have a
gathering economy, supplemented by both hunting and horticulture. But
hunting is more than simply an economic activity, for hunting is
intrinsically linked with male sexuality, providing the hunter with a
public stage for a stylised display of virility. Masculinity is thus
defined in terms of self-assertiveness, violence, and a belligerent
temper — such belligerence being instilled in boys from an early age.
Gender antagonism or “sexual bellicosity” is thus intrinsic to the
Shavante definition of manhood, as is ritual violence against women. Men
have political supremacy, and violence occurs both within the community,
and in hostilities with outsiders. According to Maybury-Lewis, much of
Shavante life is a function of politics, and such politics is based on
competition between groups of males (1971:104).
Overing notes that this description of the Shavante is in accordance
with Collier and Rosaldo’s (1981) depiction of the culture of a “bride
service society,” where hunting, killing, and male sexuality are
ideologically linked — a depiction, she feels, which is based on a
rather selective examination of the ethnographic material.The Piaroa
style of manhood, Overing suggests, stands in extreme contrast to that
of the Shavante. Living in Southern Venezuela, the Piaroa, like the
Shavante, combine gathering with hunting and garden cultivation — as
well as fishing. They are — relatively speaking, highly egalitarian:
each territory has a politico-religious leader (Ruwang), but his
authority is limited. Neither the community, as a collective, nor any
individual, owns land: all products of the forest are shared equally
among members of the household. Piaroa social life, according to
Overing, is very unformalised, and a great emphasis is put on personal
autonomy. They see great virtue in living peacefully, and in being
tranquil, and their social life is free of most forms of physical
violence. Coercion has no place in their social life, and any expression
of violence is focused on outsiders. Gender relations are neither
hierarchic nor antagonistic, and the ideal of social maturity is the
same for both men and women — one of “controlled tranquility”(87).The
portrait of Piaroa society thus accords with that suggested by Clastres.
The Semai people of Malaysia were the subject of an important early
study by Dentan (1968) — who significantly described them as a
“non-violent” people. In recent years they have been portrayed,
Robarchek (1989) suggests, in terms of both the images that we earlier
described — as both the quintessential noble savage, and as bloodthirsty
killers. Robarchek, in his ethnographic account of these people, whose
social life is seen as “relatively free of violence,” steers between
these two extremes, and sees the Semai as an example of a peaceful
society — along with the Mbuti of the Ituri forest, the Kalahari
bushmen, the Tahitians, the Inuit, and the Haluk (Turnbull 1961,Thomas
1958, Levy 1973, Briggs 1970, Spiro 1952). But the emphasis on
non-violence does not necessarily imply a lack of egoism or
individualism, and Robarchek suggests that among the Semai there is a
psycho-cultural emphasis on individualism and autonomy, as well as on
nonviolence, nurturance, and dependency — a theme I explored in my study
of another Asian forest community, the Hill Pandaram (Morris 1982). The
themes of danger and dependency, according to Robarchek, are ubiquitous
in the Semai’s social life. Danger is felt to be omnipresent �� from the
natural world, from spirits, and from outsiders. However, Robarchek does
not explore the socio-historical context of the Semai; encapsulated as
they are within a wider economic system, they are people who have,
through the centuries, been harassed and exploited by outsiders.
Dependency has equal emphasis, and there are important moral imperatives
to share food, and to avoid conflict and violence. Paramount emphasis is
thus given to the values of nurturance, generosity, and group belonging.
The protection and nurturance by the kin community is described as “the
only refuge” in a hostile world — although the dangers are expressed by
Robarchek in terms of a cultural image rather than as stemming from a
political reality.
But this emphasis on sharing, dependency, and nonviolence co-exists with
an equally important emphasis on individual autonomy. A sense of
individuality, of personal autonomy, and of freedom from inter-personal
constraints, is stressed from the earliest years of childhood — and at
extremes this may entail for the Semai emotional isolation, fragility in
marriage ties, and a lack of empathy towards others.
Other Asian forest people have been described as peaceful societies, and
exemplify a similar cultural pattern to that of the Semai. In her
account of the Chewong, for example, Signe Howell (1989) suggests that
for these people, “To be angry is not to be human, but to be fearful
is.” On the basis of the ethnographic data, she questions whether
aggression is an intrinsic part of human nature. Gibson, likewise, in
his discussion of the Buid of the Philippines — also shifting
cultivators like the Semai and Chewong — suggest that these people are a
society “at peace,” for they place a high moral value on tranquility,
and a corresponding low value on “aggression.” But Gibson sees these
moral attitudes as the product of historical processes in which the Buid
were consistently the victims of outside forces. Their culture cannot
therefore be seen simply as an effect of innate psycho-biological
capacities, nor in terms of their adaptation to the forest environment
(1989: 76).
Among hunter-gatherers, and such village-based, small scale
horticulturists as the Yanomami, Semai, and Sambia, there is close
correlation between the degree of internal warfare — armed raids — and
the degree to which gender hierarchies develop, the degree that is, of
male domination over women. But this correlation does not hold, Harris
suggests, when we move to societies with a more complex political
system, those constituting chiefdoms. Such chiefdoms typically engage in
warfare with distant enemies, and this, he writes, “enhances rather than
worsens the status of women since it results in avunculocal or
matrilocal domestic organisations” (1991: 66).
In more complex, multi-village chiefdoms, where men undertake long
sojourns for the purposes of hunting, trade, or warfare, matrilocality
tends to prevail. In this context women assume control over the entire
domestic spheres of life. External warfare is therefore associated,
Harris suggests, with matrilineal kinship and a high degree of gender
equality.
The classic example of this association of external warfare and gender
equality — Harris puts an emphasis on warfare rather than on hunting or
external trade — is that of the Iroquois. These matrilocal, matrilineal
people resided in communal long houses whose activities were directed by
senior women. The in-marrying husband had little control over domestic
affairs, agriculture being largely in the hands of the women. The
political system of the Iroquois consisted of a council of elders, of
elected male chiefs from different villages. Senior women of the long
houses nominated the members of this council, but they did not serve on
the council. However, they could prevent the seating of any man they
opposed, and by controlling the domestic economy had a great deal of
influence over the council’s decisions. In the public domain they thus
possessed by indirect means almost as much influence as men (Brown
1975). However, this situation did not entail a matriarchal situation,
Harris contends, for the women did not humiliate, exploit or harass
their men. This however had little to do with their feminine nature:
there is plenty of evidence of women’s involvement elsewhere in armed
combat, and of them being enthusiastic supporters of war and torture.
“It was lack of power and not lack of masculinity,” Harris writes, that
prevented women in pre-industrial societies setting up matriarchal
systems (1993: 69).
In Cannibals and Kings (1977: 92–93), Harris suggests that matrilineal
forms of organisation were a short-lived phase in the development of
primitive states. He writes:
Matrilocality being a recurrent method of transcending the limited
capacity of patrilineal village groups to form multi-village military
alliances, it seems likely that societies on the threshold of statehood
would frequently adopt matrilineal forms of social organisation. (92)
He cites Robert Briffault and several of the classical authors to
suggest that many early European and Asian states had exhibited a
matrilineal phase, a context in which marriage was matrilocal, women had
relatively high status, and a cult of female ancestors was found. But
this phase, as said, was short-lived, and few states, ancient or modern,
have matrilineal kinship systems. As he puts it, “With the rise of the
state, women again lost status... the old male supremacy complex
reassert(ed) itself in full force” (1977: 93).
Although matrilineal kinship has virtually ceased to be a topic of
interest among anthropologists (cf Moore 1988, Ingold 1994), it has been
of central concern to many Afrocentric scholars (Diop 1989) and
ecofeminists, who have offered us lyrical accounts of a universal
egalitarian matriarchy that existed prior to patriarchy and to the
formation of the city-state, which is linked to the incursions of
nomadic pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe. Given that matrilineal
kinship is closely linked, as Harris suggests, with the rise of
chieftains, I shall conclude this essay by critically discussing this
literature.
Matriarchy as an original form of social organisation was a central
doctrine of many early anthropologists. The writings of Jacob Bachofen
(1967) on classical mythology and religion were particularly
influential. Bachofen suggested that “all civilisation and culture are
essentially grounded in the establishment and adornment of the hearth,”
and that matriarchy was an intermediate cultural stage in the
development of human society, between hunter-gathering and the rise of
the city-state. It was associated with the development of agriculture,
mother-right (which did not necessarily imply the political domination
of women), reciprocal rather than a Promethean attitude towards nature,
and a religious system that emphasised humanity’s dependence on the
earth. But although Bachofen suggested that at this stage of human
evolution women were “the repository of all culture,” he also emphasised
that in all the classical civilizations — Egypt, Greece, Rome — an
intrinsic relationship existed between phallic gods like Osiris
(associated with water as a fecundating element) and female deities like
Isis, who were equated with the earth, even though the latter were given
more prominence. Whenever we encounter matriarchy, Bachofen writes, we
find it bound up with “chtho- nian religions,“focused around female
deities (88). He also makes the interesting observation that whereas the
tran-sience of material life goes hand in hand with matrilineal kinship,
father-right is bound up with the immortality of a supramaterial life
belonging to the “regions of light”. With the development of patriarchy
in the classical civilisations of Egypt and Greece, “the creative
principle is dissociated from earthly matter”, and comes to be
associated with such deities as the Olympian gods” (129). With the
“triumph of paternity,” humans are seen as breaking the “bonds of tel-
lurism” (earthly life), and spiritual life rises over “corporeal
existence.” The “progress,” as Bachofen views it, from matriarchy to
patriarchy is thus seen by him as an important turning point in the
history of gender relations (109).
The writings of Bachofen have had an enormous influence. Engels
considered his discovery of matrilineal kinship — the original
“mother-right gens” — as a crucial stage in human evolution; as on par
with Darwin’s theories in biology. In an often quoted phrase Engels
suggested “the overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat
of the female sex” (1968: 488). Feminist anthropologists who have been
influenced by Engels — such as Reed, Leacock, and Sacks — have thus
strongly argued against the idea that the subordination of women is
universal. They suggest that women have been significant producers in
virtually all human societies, and that in many societies — particularly
matrilineal societies — women have shared power and authority with men.
Their activities were not necessarily devalued, and women often had a
good deal of social autonomy, that is, they had decision-making power
over their own lives and activities (Sacks 1979: 65–95; Leacock
1981:134).
Anthropological and historical studies in recent decades have indicated
the complexity and diversity of human cultures, and have posed the
question of whether matriarchy (however conceived) can be viewed simply
as a cultural stage in the evolution of human societies. Yet in various
ways Bachofen’s bipolar conception of human history still has currency.
For example, Bachofen has an unmistakable presence in the writings of
the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop (1989), though Diop gives
Bachofen’s thesis a strange twist — giving it a geographical and
racialist interpretation. Thus matriarchy is seen as having flourished
only in the South (Africa), and has, as its correlates, a settled
agrarian way of life, a territorial state, gender equality, burial of
the dead, and an ethic of social collectivism. Patriarchy in Africa is
linked to the intrusions of Islam. For all his scholarship, and his
attempt to provide a more authentic anthropology, Diop’s work hardly
captures the complexity of the history and culture of either Africa or
Eurasia.
But here I want to focus on the writings of some eco- feminists,
especially those who espouse the “wisdom of goddess spirituality”
(Spretnak 1991).
Whereas early classical scholars, like Bachofen, Harrison, and Murray,
saw chthonic deities as co-existing with male deities associated with
the sun or sky — Ra, Apollo, Zeus, Amun — and implied that the latter
deities came to have primacy only with the development of patriarchy and
state structures, many ecofeminists now see the goddess as a Cosmic
Mother, a universal deity existent in all cultures prior to patriarchy.
The male deities seem to be identified not with state structures —
mother goddess cults find their apotheosis in the theocratic states of
Egypt and Crete — but with a later period of history with the emergence
of imperial states and/or capitalism. Mother goddess cults are thus seen
as a universal phenomenon, an expression of ancient women’s cultures
that once existed everywhere (Sjoo and Mor 1987:27).
While the proponents of the hunting hypothesis, like Ardrey (1976),
suggest that all aspects of human life — language, intelligence,
sociality, and culture — are derived from the hunting way of life,
ecofeminists suggest the exact antithesis of this, and that cultural
life is essentially the creation of women. As Sjoo and Mor proclaim,
“women created most of early human culture” (1987: 33). To refute
hunting proponents and these ecofeminists, it is probable that most
basic life-tasks were shared, and thus human culture is the creation of
both men and women.
Contrary to Bachofen, who emphasised the “materiality” of matriarchy —
based as it was on organic life — and thus associated spirituality with
patriarchy, contemporary ecofeminists reverse this distinction and
loudly proclaim the spirituality of matriarchy.
Aware, however, that there seems to be no historical evidence for
matriarchy, feminist scholars have used terms like “communal matrifocal
systems” or “matristic” to describe the more or less egalitarian
communities that existed in the Palaeolithic (hunter-gathering) and
Neolithic (agriculture) periods. Generally speaking, ecofeminists have
tended to ignore anthropology, and have focused more on archaeology and
classical studies, especially on mythology. They, like Diop, present us
with a highly simplistic bipolar conception of human history. The latter
is described in terms of an opposition between ancient matriarchies and
a patriarchal system centred on men. We have the same kind of gnostic
dualism that Diop presented in his postulate of two cradles of humanity.
Sjoo and Mor (1987) cogently outline this dualism, and it may be
summarised as follows:
Ancient matriarchies
Modern Patriarchy
What is of interest, however, is that although Diop equated matriarchy
with Black Africa, many classical scholars seem to follow their
Victorian forebears in conflating race, culture, and language —
contemporary ecofeminists see the historical dialectic between the two
social systems as occurring within the European context itself. Sjoo and
Mors account of the “ancient religion” of the mother goddess largely
focuses on Europe and on the cultures of classical antiquity — Egypt,
Greece, Crete, and Sumeria. Riane Eisler’s theory of cultural evolution,
expressed in The Chalice and the Blade (1987), focuses almost entirely
on the European context and makes no mention of Africa at all. Eisler’s
thesis is fairly straightforward and represents an elaboration and
popularisation of ideas put forward long ago by Bachofen. This suggests
that the cultures of old or ancient Europe were based on settled
agriculture, were matrifocal, peaceful, ecocentric and focused on mother
goddess cults that emphasised the life-generating and nurturing powers
of the universe. Gender equality was the norm. It was symbolised by the
chalice, the drinking cup. This Golden Age of female-oriented society
that existed in “old Europe” (which Diop had argued was based on pas-
toralism and patriarchy) was either slowly transformed, or suddenly
shattered — according to the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1974) — by
marauding pastoralists migrating from the Asian steppes around 4000BC,
or patriarchy was facilitated by the rise of a military dictatorship, as
in Babylon and Egypt (as Sjoo and Mor contend, 1987; 253). Both theories
contend that European neolithic culture was radically transformed from a
peaceful, sedentary, egalitarian, matrilineal society to one based on
patriarchy. There was a “patriarchal shift” in old Europe, and the
patriarchal society that emerged was based on pastoralism, with its
warrior ethic. Its socio-cultural correlates were: the worship of male
sky gods, the desacralisa- tion of the natural world, and an attitude of
domination towards nature, gender and social hierarchy, private
property, and the state. In this process the mother goddess cults were
suppressed. This transition, according to Eisler, represents a
“cataclysmic turning point” in European history, and the new patriarchal
culture that emerged is symbolised by the blade. A society based on
partnership between men and women gave way to one based on domination —
including the domination of women by men. Eisler presents this as a new
theory of cultural evolution. But it is hardly new: it is a Eurocentric
restatement of the theory of Bachofen and Engels. Yet when we examine
the ethnographic record concerning the religion of hunter- gatherers, or
even some small-scale horticultural societies, neither matrilineal
kinship nor mother goddess cults loom large. The religious ideology of
the Khoisan hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa and of the Australian
Aborigines hardly offers much support for the universality of mother
goddess forms of spirituality. Although there is a close identification
with the natural world, particularly with animals (through totemic
spirits) or through spirits of the dead, there is little evidence among
foragers of the deification of the earth itself as female, still less of
the whole universe. Equally, although there is a matrifocal emphasis
among many hunter-gatherers (Morris 1982) there is little emphasis on
descent groups, and the key social groups are the family and band. Kin
groups may have salience for ritual or marriage purposes, and may have
totemic significance, but often, as with the Australian Aboriginals,
these are as likely to be patrilineal as matrilineal. Among small-scale
horticulturists in Melanesia and Amazonia, as we noted above,
patrilineal kinship has ideological stress, raiding and homicide are
endemic, and male initiation put a focal emphasis on the training of
young boys to be fierce warriors and to dominate women. Mary Mellor
(1992: 141–150) has drawn on this ethnographic material to question the
assumption that clan-based societies are necessarily peaceful, or
exhibit gender equality. Even matriliny, she remarked, was “no guarantee
against male violence” (47).
There is an unwarranted assumption among many feminist scholars that
matrilineal kinship, gender equality, and mother goddess cults go
together, and necessarily entail each other. What is of interest is that
cults focused on the mother goddess and on the earth mother find their
richest elaboration not among hunter-gatherers, nor among small-scale
horticulturists, nor indeed among societies that have a focal emphasis
on matrilineal kinship — like the Iroquois and Bemba — but rather among
theocratic states based on advanced agriculture, as Bachofen suggested.
In an important survey of politics and gender among hunter-gatherers and
small-scale horticulturists, Collier and Rosaldo (1981), much to their
surprise, found little ritual celebration of women as nurturers nor of
women’s unique capacity to give birth. Motherhood always formed a
natural source of emotional satisfaction among women, and was culturally
valued, but among such people fertility was not emphasised, and the
deification of the mother as source of all life was generally absent. It
is where there are complex states, where divine rulers exist — as for
the ancient Egyptians and the Inca — who incarnate deities associated
with the sun, that the earth is deified, and motherhood
ritually.emphasised. For it was precisely among such theocratic
societies based on intensive agriculture that there was a necessary
emphasis on the land and on the reproduction of the labour force.
Neither Babylon nor Egypt was an egalitarian paradise to the nomadic
Hebrew pastoralists, but both were places where they were enslaved and
subject to forced labour. In an important sense, then, the deification
of the earth as female and the emphasis on fertility — both of the land
and of women — is a central tenet not of matrilineal societies like the
Iroquois but of the patriarchal ideology of theocratic states. This
ideology was clearly expressed in the writings of Francis Bacon, who
identified women with nature, and advocated the knowledge and domination
of both. Sherry Ortner (“Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”
1974), suggests an explanation for supposedly universal male dominance
(patriarchy) by linking such dominance to an ideology that equates women
with nature. For Ortner, then, mother goddess cults are a reflection of
patriarchy, not of a matricentric culture. One feminist anthropologist
has indeed argued that the myth of matriarchy” is a fiction, and is used
as a tool to keep woman “bound to her place” (Bamberger 1974).
When we thus examine the early theocratic states of Crete and Egypt,
which are alleged to be matricentric paradises that exhibited gender
equality and a peaceful social environment, what do we find? According
to Janet Biehl (1991) what we find are highly developed bronze-age
civilisations which, like theocratic states, were hierarchical,
exploitative, and oppressive. The theory of Gimbutas — that hierarchy
emerged when a group of pure pastoralists arrived out of the Eurasian
steppe and conquered pristine neolithic farmers — is a naive
simplification of European history, and scholars like Renfrew and
Mallory would seem to agree. (Biehl 1991: 43, Renfrew 1987: 95–97,
Mallory 1989:183–5)
Gender equality with regard to property, as in Egypt, may well have been
restricted to the political elite; but in any case it co-existed, as
Biehl points out, with an extremely hierarchical social structure
focused around the pharaoh and a vast theocracy. The expansionist
warfare, capital punishment, and ritual sacrifices that were
characteristic of most of these theocratic states — both in the Fertile
Crescent and in the Americas — is generally overlooked or even dismissed
by ecofeminist scholars. In the same way, Diop is an apologist for
African states and the caste system as a form of social organisation.
Matriarchy has two distinct foci of meaning, which Bachofen tended to
conflate. One is its connection with ch- thonic deities that associate
the earth with motherhood; the other is with matrilineal kinship, which
is a social group or category whose membership is determined by links
through the female line. In social terms, the two meanings are not
coterminous, for whereas mother goddess cults are associated with
theocratic states and advanced agriculture, matrilineal kinship is
associated with horticultural societies that lack both domestic animals
and plough agriculture. Out of 564 societies recorded in the World-
Ethnographic Survey, David Aberle found only 84 (15%) where matriliny
was the predominant form of kinship. He thus thought matriliny a
“relatively rare phenomenon” (1964: 663). Contrary to Diop’s theory,
matrilineal kinship is found throughout the world, but it is mainly
found among horticultural societies that have developed chiefdoms. It is
not found where there is intensive agriculture, nor generally among
pastoralists, nor where state structures have developed — for patriarchy
is intrinsically bound up with the state. Bachofen was of the belief
that matriarchy was “fully consonant” with a situation where hunting,
trade, and external raiding filled the life of men, keeping them for
long periods away from women, who thus became primarily responsible for
the household and for agriculture. Thus one may conclude that matriliny
— but not mother goddess cults — seems to be particularly associated
with horticultural societies that lack the plough, in which one finds
developed political systems in the form of chiefdoms, and where there is
what Poewe (1981) described as a complementary dualism between men and
women. In these situations, subsistence agriculture is the domain of
women, and men are actively engaged in hunting and trade. Given their
dominance in the subsistence sphere, women are not necessarily excluded
from the public domain, and may be actively involved in public rituals
and political decision making. All the classical matrilineal societies
that have been described by anthropologists essentially follow this
pattern — the Bemba, Yao and Luapula of Central Africa, the Trobriand
Islanders, the Ashanti of Ghana, the Iroquois and Ojibwa of North
America. All express a high degree of gender equality, sexuality is
positively valued, and there is an emphasis on sharing and reciprocity,
but significantly there is little evidence of “mother goddess” cults.
Such cults are bound up with the state and hierarchy, which is why they
continued to flourish as an intrinsic part of Latin Christianity and
Hinduism. There seems indeed to be a close correlation, as Harris
suggests, between gender equality, matrilineal kinship, and the
emergence of chiefdoms among horticultural societies.