CONTEMPORARY CLASSIFICATIONS OF SMALL-SCALE STATELESS SOCIETIES

As mentioned above, we need some terminology to identify the soci-eties that most closely fi t the contractarian defi nition of the state of nature. This section explains what terms we use and why, and it

argues that the smallest-scale stateless societies, as anthropologists understand them, fi t the defi nition of the state of nature used in the debate over contractarianism.

The philosophical debate over the social contract usually assumes, for simplicity, a dichotomy between the state and statelessness, between full sovereign authority and no authority at all, but political power exists on a continuum from no authority to full sovereignty.

Contractarians usually describe the state of nature as the complete absence of authority, and contractarian logic would seem to require all authority, not just fully sovereign authority, to be justifi ed by con-sent. Therefore, our investigation needs to address the societies that most lack authority. As Iain Hampsher-Monk writes:

The state of nature is simply the condition of men without a sovereign power to compel order. Just as we may never have a perfect vacuum, perhaps we can never have a situation where there are no vestiges of the restraints that sovereignty pro-vides, but inasmuch as sovereignty is absent, to that extent men will begin to exhibit behaviour typical of the state of nature.

(Hampsher-Monk 1992: 27)

Most important to our project in this book is the comparison of state societies with those at the opposite end of the spectrum of cal complexity: hunter-gatherer bands that have no form of politi-cal authority and where politipoliti-cal decision-making tends to be done through group consensus instead of by the authority of an individual, a group of individuals, or even through some other mechanism of political control. Here, the differences in the political systems of states and acephalous hunter-gatherer bands is clear, even though there is enormous variability in the political systems of both states and hunter-gatherer bands.

The smallest and loosest observed form of socio-political organiza-tion is the “hunter-gatherer band,” a nomadic group of about fi fteen to fi fty people (including children and elderly) who obtain all of their food from foraging (Kelly 1995: 258; Lee and Daly 1999: 3; Boehm 2001;

Ames 2007: 490–1). Archaeologists have found evidence of nomadic foraging groups living at this scale tens or perhaps hundreds of thou-sands of years ago. Ethnographers have documented nomadic foraging groups at this scale all over the world from the tropics to the Arctic, in all types of climate and terrain. Although any generalizations about

bands should be taken cautiously as tendencies drawn from limited data, ethnographers have recognized many similarities in the political and social practices of observed bands.

The statelessness of band society is uncontroversial. Observed bands have no fi xed membership, little or no corporate identity, no recognized leaders, no ranks, no institutional or power structures, and no specialization in production except minor differences along the lines of age and gender. All of their political actions are ad hoc. Although we use the term “band members,” it should be understood as nothing more than the people who happen to camp together at a particular time. Members commit neither to obey any authority within the band nor to remain with the band for any longer than they might wish to (Fried 1967; Redfi eld 1967: 21; Lee and DeVore 1968b; Turnbull 1968;

Woodburn 1968b: 103; Woodburn 1982: 434; Bird-David 1994: 591, 597; Leacock 1998: 143; Lee and Daly 1999: 4; Johnson and Earle 2000: 32–3; Boehm 2001: 72–3; Renfrew 2007: 148).

To use Lucas’s (1966: 62) words, bands settle disputes “any old how.” If not everyone can agree, the group often splits up (temporarily or permanently) to avoid confl ict, creating two autonomous polities out of one in minutes. Even the scale of a society is not necessarily fi xed.

Some bands assemble into larger groups, but usually not for more than a few weeks or months at a time. Some bands break up into groups as small as single nuclear families for part of the year. All observed bands treat land as a commons, sometimes as a fully open, sometimes as a partly closed commons (Turnbull 1968; Woodburn 1968b: 103; Bird-David 1994; Leacock 1998: 142–3; Johnson and Earle 2000: 32–3;

Boehm 2001: 72–3, 86–7; Wengrow and Graeber 2015). As the online appendix explains in greater detail, the power structures of both sover-eignty and landownership are absent in band society.

We have said that groups at this scale have existed since the appear-ance of humans, and if “band” is defi ned as a nomadic foraging group of fewer than 100 people, we can say that bands have existed for 200,000 years, but we cannot say with certainty that earlier bands share the political and social features described for historically observed bands.

The farther back one goes, the less certain any such generalizations are.

Also relevant to this discussion are what have sometimes been called

“middle-range” societies (see Jérôme Rousseau 2006 for review).

These include what Service (1962) and Carneiro (1970) respectively called “tribes” and “autonomous villages,” and what both called

“chiefdoms.” While the characteristics of the opposing ends of the political spectrum are clearly distinct from one another, variabil-ity among middle-range societies remains much more controversial.

However, for the purposes of this book and from the perspective of political philosophy, the distinction between autonomous villages and more complex chiefdoms holds considerable importance.

Larger-than-band-level societies of about 100–600 people, or what we call autonomous villages following Carneiro (1970), appear in the archaeological record within the last 20,000 years and only become common with the last 5,000–10,000 years. Such societies at this scale are extremely diverse, which is one of the sources of controversy in describing them. If we can make any generalizations about them, we can say that such societies often have some form of ranking but rank-ing usually comes with little or no authority. Autonomous villages have little if any centralized power. They can split to settle disputes but not as quickly or easily as band societies. They usually have econo-mies based on swidden (“slash-and-burn”) agriculture, but they can be herders or hunter-gatherers if the environment is particularly favor-able. Hunter-gathering and agricultural groups at this scale tend to be sedentary, moving only occasionally. Autonomous villages typically treat land as a commons. For example, individuals might have the right to farm somewhere in the village but not to do so in any par-ticular spot (Fried 1967: 113, 129–30; Carneiro 1970: 734–8; Wilson 1988: 3; Lee 1990: 236; Johnson and Earle 2000: 179–80, 191–2;

Boehm 2001: 3–4, 93; Roscoe 2002; Bandy 2004; Renfrew 2007:

142; McCall 2009: 161).

Although the nature of the contractarian debate requires a focus on band societies, there are three reasons not to leave autonomous villages out of the discussion: fi rst, they have been much better doc-umented by ethnographers. Second, anthropological studies do not always draw a strong distinction between bands and villages (nor do they need to). Third, under any reasonable defi nition of sovereignty, they are stateless; they represent one of the alternatives to the state.

However the fi eld of anthropology chooses to talk about societies at this level of political integration, it is clear that there are many societ-ies with low-level individual authority and small-scale differences in status, power, and wealth.

Within the last 12,000 years, “chiefs” began establishing power over several villages at once, forming political units of populations ranging

between thousands and hundreds of thousands of people (or more), usually called “chiefdoms.” Many chiefdoms would actually qualify as sovereign according to the political philosophical defi nition of the state (but not according to the anthropological defi nition). Although the power of chiefs can be substantial in this sense, it is not always sovereign power, often fl uctuating within a group of chiefs (Bellwood 1987: 31–3; Earle 1997; Thomas 1999: 229; Earle 2000; Earle 2002;

Renfrew 2007: 152, 164, 173–6). Thus, chiefdoms range enormously in size and scale, and hence the utility of this term has been intensely chal-lenged within the fi eld of anthropology (Pauketat 2007). We are quick to recognize the validity of these critiques and the fact that the term

“chiefdom” has become a vacuous category into which a wide range of dissimilar cases end up being discarded. Therefore, and because chief-doms have some (but not always all) of the characteristics of state-level society, we mostly leave them out of our discussion.

The online appendix includes a more detailed argument for readers who remain skeptical that most small-scale nomadic foragers have nei-ther statehood nor landownership.

3. ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE VIOLENCE HYPOTHESIS