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Chiefdoms: From Archaic Polities to Modern Terrorist Organizations
[collection article]
Abstract The chiefdom concept is one of the most productive in social anthropology and
political evolution. It helps to deeply understand the process of complication of
society's structure and the development path from stateless society to early
states. However, even when states spread everywhere, chiefdo... view more
The chiefdom concept is one of the most productive in social anthropology and
political evolution. It helps to deeply understand the process of complication of
society's structure and the development path from stateless society to early
states. However, even when states spread everywhere, chiefdoms still remained
political and administrative actors. At present one can find some features of
chiefdoms in developing countries (e.g., in some regions of Africa) and in different
kinds of organizations especially in illegal and terrorist ones. Thus, using
chiefdom theories one can clarify a few basics of such kind of organization
as well. Therefore, it makes sense to show how such chiefdom-like structures
preserve and develop the features of ancient polities within them.
Thus, in the modern world, along with states, one can find numerous alternative
social and political organizations, which, to a greater or lesser extent, have
some features that are similar to certain ancient polities. How and why is this
possible? We hope that this paper will shed some light on this question. However,
it requires and deserves further study.... view less
Classification
History
Free Keywords
chiefdom; polity; pre-state polities; chieftaincies; complex polities; stateless societies; Al-Qaeda; ISIL; societal complexity
Collection Title
Evolution: Evolutionary Trends, Aspects, and Patterns
Editor
Grinin, Leonid; Korotayev, Andrey
Document language
English
Publication Year
2019
Publisher
Uchitel Publishing House
City
Volgograd
Page/Pages
p. 124-133
ISBN
978-5-7057-5560-8
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed