8.7: Key Terms

acephalous societies

communities with no formal positions of leadership.

age sets

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.

Arab Spring

a series of protests that spread throughout the Arab world in the early 2010s, demanding an end to oppressive government and poor living conditions.

asafo

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.

authority

the exercise of power based on expertise, charisma, or roles of leadership.

band societies

communities of gatherer-hunters in which leadership is temporary, situational, and informal.

big man

an informal leader who has gained power by accumulating wealth, sponsoring feasts, and helping young men pay bride wealth.

centralized societies

communities in which power is concentrated in formal positions of authority, such as chiefs or kings.

chief

the inherited office of leadership in a chiefdom, combining coercive forms of economic, political, judicial, military, and religious authority.

chiefdoms

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.

chinampas

agricultural plots created from layers of mud and vegetation in the shallow part of a lake.

clans

large kin groups that trace their descent from a common ancestor who is either not remembered or possibly mythological.

coercive power

the ability to enforce judgments and commands using socially sanctioned violence.

colonial states

state governments imposed by foreigners to rule over local peoples.

failed state

a state that cannot perform any of the essential functions of a state.

fragile state

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.

hegemony

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.

ideology

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.

imagined communities

citizens of a nation-state joined together by rituals and practices that give them a collective, imagined sense of community.

king

hereditary ruler of a multiethnic empire based on a chiefdom.

leopard-skin chief

an informal mediator in Nuer society who negotiated settlement in the case of homicide.

lineage orders

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.

nation

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.

nation-state

a political institution joining the apparatus of the state with the notion of cultural belonging or peoplehood.

parrhesia

courageous public speech inspired by a moral desire to reveal the truth and demand social change.

persuasive power

the ability to influence others without any formal means of enforcement.

political economy

study of the ways in which political and economic realms continually reinforce and sometimes contradict one another over time.

politics

all elements of the sociocultural dynamics of power

postcolonial studies

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.

power

the ability to influence people and/or shape social processes and social structures.

proto-states

societies that exhibit some but not all of the features of state societies.

reform

the call for systemic changes to address social problems.

resistance

the expression of disagreement or dissatisfaction with the social order; may be explicit or implicit.

revolution

the replacement of one social order with a different one, often to create enhanced justice, equality, stability, or freedom.

segmentary lineage

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.

social movement

an organized set of actions by a group outside of government aiming at achieving social change.

social stratification

the division of society into groups that are ranked according to wealth, power, or prestige.

state societies

large, stratified, multiethnic societies with highly centralized leadership, bureaucracies, systems of social control, and military forces exerting exclusive control over a defined territory.

tribal societies

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.

tribe

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.

village democracies

acephalous societies in which an array of social groups provide arenas for discussion and consensus.