-The bureaucracy typical of a developed, modern, nation-state was first implemented in 300 BCE in China?
-It has been demonstrated that a form of morality evolves spontaneously alongside endeavors based on teamwork, motivated solely by the self-interest of the parties involved?
-Humans, and other animals, are biologically wired to demonstrate altruism towards genetic kind as well as reciprocal altruism?
-Tribal organization did not arise until the development of argriculture?
-Prior to tribes, hunter-gatherer societies are organized into bands or family groups?
-Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest developed tribal organizations without developing agriculture due to the abundance of natural resources?
-Band organizations have no private property or defined leadership?
-"Depending on climatic conditions, hunter-gatherer societies have a population density of 0.1 to 1 persons per square kilometer, while the invention of agriculture permits densities to rise to 40-60 persons per square kilometer"?
-Agnation is the social form of patrilineal descent that traces lineage exclusively through the male line, and in which women move in with the male side of the line?
-"In the agnatic systems of China and India, this involved severing her ties with her birth family almost completely. Marriages were thus often a moment of sadness for the wife's parents, compensated only by the pride price they were paid for their daughter. The woman had no status in her husband's family until she gave birth to a male offspring, at which point she became fully integrated into the husband's lineage, praying and offering sacrifices at her husband's ancestral tomb and protecting her son's future inheritance"?
-"Matriliny simply means that it is the husband who leaves his descent group upon marriage and joins that of his wife. Power and resources are still largely controlled by men"?
-Matrilinies are "typically found under one specific set of environmental conditions, such as rainfall horticulture where gardening is done primarily by women"?
-The success of tribal organizations, and specifically large tribal organizations of thousands of people spread over a large area, is predicated by segmentary development (each subsection of the tribe is a self-sufficient segment that typically unites with other segments to wage war, but otherwise is relatively autonomous) and the development of ancestor worship?
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
Legitimately, this book should probably be required reading at some level of education, inasmuch as it covers a large span of history using history, IR theory, biology, archaelogy, anthropology, and philosophy to describe the development of political organizations into the modern nation-state, most specifically in an attempt to explain the prevalence of democracy as the dominant paradigm of governance, and the difficulties involved in developing a democratic (or even functional) state. It also seems to avoid eurocentrism fairly successfully.
I've heard very good things about this book from some of my former political science professors. Your short tidbits have further spiked my interest, and I'll likely be purchasing this book very soon.
ReplyDeleteFrancis Fukuyama is an excellent writer and political scientist. While he is unjustly despised in many segments of the academic left, and dismissed by much of the realist establishment in international relations; he has consistently displayed his ability to make persuasive and original arguments.
I particularly enjoyed "The End of History" - a much maligned and deeply misunderstood book on the ideological triumph of liberal-democracy. Even his dabbling in historicist and in my view excessively philosophic argumentation didn't undermine his core points. Hell they might even have strengthened them.
"State Building" is also excellent, especially in its historical examination of often violent and coercive state formation; creating significant questions for contemporary Western interventionism, democratization projects and state building. In addition it provides good theoretical background on institutional development, public administration and what constitutes a "state."
If you haven't checked out these two books, do so after you've finished "The Origins of Political Order." There are only a few other political scientists that match him in terms of cross-discipline appeal, and engaging argumentation. You'll definitely learn some more useful (or useless?) shit.
- CanadianNooB
I started today and I'm 78 pages in. It's pretty good, and still an easy read. If I had to criticize it, I'd say that he dwells too little on pre-state political constructs, and doesn't go into enough detail regarding them. I have this theory floating around in my head that below the state level, a myriad of tribal organizations flourish, and only subordinate themselves to the state inasmuch as they believe in the efficacy of the state's organs of control and are invested in the state's teleology.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see why liberal intellectuals would dislike him. He basically says, "listen, I understand the need to avoid judgment in anthropology, and understand that there exceptions to any anthropological rule, but all social constructs are not created equal and generalizations are generally right." He's definitely been added to a list of author's that I'll regularly read.
My next pick is Fault Lines by Raghuram Rajan. Then some Rawls, then some Chomsky (linguistics, not politics) then some Jaspers. I have a queue.