Politics: Influence and Power

Ch. 6 Political Systems - Social Networks from Bands and Beyond

I was thinking about why humans created political systems. Was it to create ways of dealing with conflicts within bands or among tribes? Is this what led to the creation of laws? And who gets to make the laws and why?

The following list about the complexity of groups helps me understand the need for political systems on a level I hadn't considered before. As human population began to increase and more and more "strangers" began to interact. Their ideas of how to subsist changed and needed to be managed on some level. And there was a need to cope with the exponential relations that came with larger and larger populations--governance became a necessity or so it seemed.

The Complexity of Groups
2 people = 1 relation
3 people = 3 relations
4 people = 6 relations
5 people = 10 relations
12 people = 66 relations
35 people = 600 relations
50 people = 1225 relations

Wesch has a diagram that suggests two ways humans have organized themselves -- (uncentralized) INFLUENCE and (centralized) POWER -- as we moved from bands and tribes to chiefdoms and states. You might consider Chapter 6 a way of looking at how "law & order" came into being. If you add the barrel model of culture to this and think about ideas alone, somehow we need uncentralized and centralized ways of organizing ideas alone. That's what the information age has come to be about in some ways. It's also what TED is doing with their tag "IDEAS WORTH SPREADING". They use video to share ideas with a world of people no matter what their level of wealth, power and prestige (Weber).


Wesch's list (above) of the complexity of groups also makes me think of Web 2.0 (click the tags for references to Web 2.0 at the top of the blog). Web 2.0 or online social networks like MySpace and Facebook are allowing a new kind of governance for the people, of the people, by the people more or less. Or is it a return to the egalitarianism of bands?

The Internet, esp. Web 2.0 -- user-generated-content stage of the WWW-- is allowing millions of users to mix both the INFLUENCE of being in a small band or tribe with the POWER of industrialization. Individuals can broadcast like state governments once exclusively did. You and I can talk to the writers of our textbooks or government officials with ease.

Students can write THEIR OWN textbooks and create THEIR OWN education with other students around the world whether in Russia, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or just the South Bronx. They all can access and use info immediately without being limited by wealth, power or prestige (Weber). That was nearly impossible in my time before the Web appeared esp. for the lowest class of folks in our society or for folks outside the U.S. in developing countries. Now with a laptop at an Internet Cafe you can reach the world with the click of a mouse and a keyboard.

QUESTION FOR COMMENTS: How are people in industrialized nations claiming or reclaiming being egalitarian in the anthropological sense? Conversely, how are people in developing nations becoming powerful--in the sense of the "achieved status" found in the U.S.? Could someone from a lower caste in India move beyond their "ascribed status" today and how so? Do a little homework on Google with this one. Don't just share your own opinion. Gather evidence online.

P.S.
I love the image (below) of the world that shows the various social networking sites that dominate each region. Facebook and Myspace are dominant in the U.S. but not so elsewhere.

Consider all the networks being created BEYOND BORDERS with the WWW. For example, you've heard of doctors without borders, but what about teachers without borders, mothers without borders, architects without borders, students without borders, lawyers without borders, to CEOs without borders. Google any of these for more info.

The Ultimate ReBoot: THE FIRST TALK AT TED2009

Juan Enriquez:
Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis

Chapter 5: Making A Living (Subsistence and A Brief History of Mankind)

One of the professors who inspires my teaching is Prof. Mike Wesch at KSU (National Teacher of the Year). I love his cultural anthro syllabus and the intention of his course:

Cultural Anthropology explores different cultures in all of their manifestations - from how people make a living to what people live for. In an increasingly interconnected world, cultural differences lie at the root of many of our most pressing challenges, throughout the world and in our own personal lives. There has never been a time when Cultural Anthropology has been more important than it is right now.

Subsistence.

• minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting; "social security provided only a bare subsistence"
• a means of surviving; "farming is a hard means of subsistence"
• the state of existing in reality; having substance http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• The means of living; obtaining food and shelter necessary to support life; everything that is done to "make a living" resweb.llu.edu/rford/docs/VGD/GSLVT/gslglossary.html

Last week you read about culture. This week about making a living.

Chapter 5 - Making a Living seems rather dry and uninteresting to most students. However, this chapter begins to explain the history of mankind through five adaptive strategies used to subsist, to survive, to ... make a living. It is useful to know these strategies, which are still part of modern culture in some places. These strategies help us distinguish between the ways humans in the past and the present organized into groups that shape our the shared, learned, symbolic and integrated culture we live by as well as reflect adaptive and maladaptive approaches to our survival.

This chapter will also help you understand the documentary The Corporation (which we will watch) that explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time that rose out of industrialization. "Taking its [the corporation's] status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask 'What kind of person is it?' " As we look at the forms of reciprocity that are common in each adaptive strategy, the example of corporations reflect the tensions of balanced and negative reciprocity.


YOUR COMMENTS THIS WEEK: Rather than quoting the chapter this week, write a 1-3 sentences responding to the (1) video above IF THE WORLD WE A VILLAGE as well as the (2) videos below on the Kwakiutl potlatch which was once outlawed by the government in British Columbia.

Ch. 2- Culture: What We Are

Thursday the world celebrates the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin the author of the Origin of the Species. Do you believe in evolution? Why or why not?

Chapter 3 is about how humans adapt to this world. Culture is our access to adapting to who we are and what we are and can be. Here are the objectives of the chapter:

• Understand the defining attributes of culture. In particular, you should understand what it means that culture is learned, shared, symbolic, all-encompassing, and integrated; the relationship between culture and nature; and how culture can be both adaptive and maladaptive.
• Identify the different levels of culture and why it is important to distinguish between them.
• Understand the relationship between culture and individuals.
• Distinguish between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and how both relate to human rights and anthropological research.
• Know the differences between cultural universalities, generalities, and particularities, and be able to provide examples of each.
• Understand the mechanisms of cultural change.
• Know what globalization is, the forces that are bringing it about, and its effects on local communities.

This video is a sort of reflexive ethnography of Western society and culture. Irony and humor are often useful in bringing out hidden social constructs. So check it out:

What we are; Dance Monkeys Dance by Ernest Cline - www.ernestcline.com



Many people believe in evolution. Some do not. Perhaps life is not about our beliefs per se but rather about what we can discover about ourselves from such explorations. The humor of Ricky Gervais' Introduction To The Bible (1/2) makes fun on Darwin, if you like.


I'd love to hear what struck you, what thought or ideas from Chapter 3 struck you as new or different from your previous ways of thinking. Everyone should comment on the chapter once a week or blog at least once a week.

PS. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4