Village headman
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Village headman
OR:
Village headman on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

A village head, village headman or village chief is the community leader of a village or a small town.


Usage


Brunei

In
Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely surrounded by th ...
, village head is called or in the
Malay language Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi: , Rencong: ) is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spoken in East Timor and parts of the Philippines an ...
. It is an administrative post which leads the community of a village administrative division, the third and lowest subdivision of the country.


Malaysia

Generally in
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
, the village head is called , except for the
proto Malay The term Proto-Malay, which translates to ''Melayu Asli'' (aboriginal Malay) or ''Melayu Purba'' (ancient Malay) or ''Melayu Tua'' (old Malay), refers to Austronesian speakers, possibly from mainland Asia, who moved to the Malay peninsula and ...
village where the position is called . Ketua Kampung was appointed and assisted by (Village Community Management Board). In
Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, ...
, the head of a traditional long house is called .


Indonesia

The village head in
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
is called .


China

In China, village head () is a local government or tribal post. The village headman is the person appointed to administer an area that is often a single
village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...
.


Duties and functions

The headman has several official duties in the village, and is sometimes seen as a
mediator Mediator may refer to: *A person who engages in mediation * Business mediator, a mediator in business * Vanishing mediator, a philosophical concept * Mediator variable, in statistics Chemistry and biology *Mediator (coactivator), a multiprotein ...
in disputes and a general “fixer” of village or individuals problems. Examples of headmanship have been observed among the Zuni, !Kung, and
Mehinacu The Mehinaku, Mehináko or Mehinacu are an indigenous people of Brazil. They live in the Indigenous Park of the Xingu, located around the headwaters of the Xingu River in Mato Grosso. They currently reside in area around the Tuatuari and Kuris ...
,Marvin Harris. Our Kind, Harper Perennial, 1989 among others. Nearby tribal leaders recognized or appointed by the Chinese were known as ''tusi'' (''tu-szu''; ), although they could command larger areas than a single village.


Historical usage


Japan

In
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...
Japan, the village head was called ''
nanushi ''Nanushi'' ( Japanese: 名主) was a village official in the Edo period. They were village headmen, administering a village (''mura'') under a district magistrate (''gun-dai''), the '' daikan'' of a district governor (''gunji''). Their duties inc ...
'' (名主) and was in charge of tax collection, general village administration, management of public natural resources (such as mountain, field, river and ocean) of the village, as well as negotiating with the territorial lord as the representative of the villagers.


See also

* Barangay Captain, head of a
barangay A barangay (; abbreviated as Brgy. or Bgy.), historically referred to as barrio (abbreviated as Bo.), is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district, or ward. In metropolita ...
or village in the Philippines * ''
Dibao ''Dibao'' (''ti-pao''),; also romanized as ''tepao''. sometimes called headmen or constables,Bernhardt, Kathryn ''et al.'' Civil Law in Qing and Republican China', p. 117. Stanford University Press, 1999. . Accessed 4 Nov 2011. were local officia ...
'' (''ti-pao'') or "headman", a
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
-era village official *
Opperhoofd ''Opperhoofd'' is a Dutch word (plural ''opperhoofden'') that literally translates to "upper-head", meaning "supreme headman". The Danish equivalent ''overhoved'', which is derived from a Danish pronunciation of the Dutch or Low German word, is a ...
*
Onyishi is a gerontocratic form of government in some parts of Igboland, Nigeria. It is also a common term or name normally taken as a surname or title by a person or persons whose father is the eldest in a village, or one who is the eldest in the town ...
*
Starosta The starosta or starost (Cyrillic: ''старост/а'', Latin: ''capitaneus'', german: link=no, Starost, Hauptmann) is a term of Slavic origin denoting a community elder whose role was to administer the assets of a clan or family estates. The ...
- term used in
Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...
and
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
*
Tribal chief A tribal chief or chieftain is the leader of a tribe, tribal society or chiefdom. Tribe The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of western Afroeurasia. Tribal societies are sometimes categori ...


References

Political occupations Titles of national or ethnic leadership {{anthropology-stub