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acephalous societies
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communities with no formal positions of leadership.
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age sets
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gendered groups of people of roughly the same age who play a distinctive role in society with important social obligations and abilities. Age-grade systems tend to be associated with acephalous societies.
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Arab Spring
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a series of protests that spread throughout the Arab world in the early 2010s, demanding an end to oppressive government and poor living conditions.
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asafo
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in Akan societies, the group of young men charged with protecting the town, performing public works, and representing public opinion.
Asafo
could depose corrupt and unpopular chiefs.
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authority
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the exercise of power based on expertise, charisma, or roles of leadership.
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band societies
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communities of gatherer-hunters in which leadership is temporary, situational, and informal.
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big man
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an informal leader who has gained power by accumulating wealth, sponsoring feasts, and helping young men pay bride wealth.
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centralized societies
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communities in which power is concentrated in formal positions of authority, such as chiefs or kings.
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chief
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the inherited office of leadership in a chiefdom, combining coercive forms of economic, political, judicial, military, and religious authority.
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chiefdoms
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societies in which political leadership is regionally organized through an affiliation or hierarchy of chiefs. Chiefdoms are associated with intensive agriculture, militarism, and religious ideologies.
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chinampas
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agricultural plots created from layers of mud and vegetation in the shallow part of a lake.
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clans
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large kin groups that trace their descent from a common ancestor who is either not remembered or possibly mythological.
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coercive power
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the ability to enforce judgments and commands using socially sanctioned violence.
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colonial states
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state governments imposed by foreigners to rule over local peoples.
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failed state
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a state that cannot perform any of the essential functions of a state.
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fragile state
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a state government that cannot adequately perform the essential functions of a state, such as maintaining law and order, building basic infrastructure, guaranteeing basic amenities, and defending its citizens against violence.
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hegemony
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a powerful ideology that has become generally accepted by most groups in society as common sense. Hegemony emphasizes the norms and values that support the existing social order.
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ideology
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an organized set of ideas associated with a particular group or class in society. Ideologies are used to explain how various realms of nature and society work, including such realms as economics, politics, religion, kinship, gender, and sexuality.
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imagined communities
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citizens of a nation-state joined together by rituals and practices that give them a collective, imagined sense of community.
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king
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hereditary ruler of a multiethnic empire based on a chiefdom.
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leopard-skin chief
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an informal mediator in Nuer society who negotiated settlement in the case of homicide.
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lineage orders
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societies in which extended family groups provide the primary means of social integration. Leadership in these societies is provided by elders and other temporary or situational figures.
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nation
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a sense of cultural belonging or peoplehood based on a common language, common origin story, common destiny, and common norms and values. National identities are actively constructed by states.
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nation-state
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a political institution joining the apparatus of the state with the notion of cultural belonging or peoplehood.
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parrhesia
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courageous public speech inspired by a moral desire to reveal the truth and demand social change.
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persuasive power
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the ability to influence others without any formal means of enforcement.
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political economy
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study of the ways in which political and economic realms continually reinforce and sometimes contradict one another over time.
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politics
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all elements of the sociocultural dynamics of power
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postcolonial studies
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an interdisciplinary field that combines history, anthropology, political science, and area studies in an effort to understand the diversity, complexity, and legacy of colonialism throughout the world.
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power
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the ability to influence people and/or shape social processes and social structures.
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proto-states
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societies that exhibit some but not all of the features of state societies.
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reform
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the call for systemic changes to address social problems.
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resistance
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the expression of disagreement or dissatisfaction with the social order; may be explicit or implicit.
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revolution
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the replacement of one social order with a different one, often to create enhanced justice, equality, stability, or freedom.
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segmentary lineage
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a kind of lineage order in which family units called minimal lineages are encompassed by larger groups called maximal lineages, which are subsumed by even larger groups called clans.
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social movement
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an organized set of actions by a group outside of government aiming at achieving social change.
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social stratification
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the division of society into groups that are ranked according to wealth, power, or prestige.
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state societies
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large, stratified, multiethnic societies with highly centralized leadership, bureaucracies, systems of social control, and military forces exerting exclusive control over a defined territory.
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tribal societies
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an older term used by anthropologists to refer to pastoralist and horticulturalist societies in which extended family structures provide the primary means of social integration.
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tribe
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an old-fashioned term used to describe ethnic groups or groups organized by lineage. Avoided by many anthropologists now because of connotations of primitivism and groupthink.
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village democracies
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acephalous societies in which an array of social groups provide arenas for discussion and consensus.