Sociopolitical typology refers to four types, or levels, of a
political organization
A political organization is any organization that involves itself in the political process, including political parties, non-governmental organizations, and special interest advocacy groups. Political organizations are those engaged in polit ...
: "band", "tribe", "chiefdom", and "state", created by the anthropologist
Elman Service.
Overview
Service's work is fundamental to
cultural materialism, one among several influential paradigms in modern anthropology. Ethnographic and archaeological studies in hundreds of places have revealed many correlations between economy and social and political organizations. These types correlate with adaptive strategies or economic typology.
Thus, foragers as an economic type tend to have band organization. Similarly, many pastoralists and horticulturalists have lived in tribal societies or, more simply, tribes. While most chiefdoms had farming economies, herding was important in some of the
Middle East
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
ern chiefdoms. The non-industrial states usually had an agricultural base. With food production come the larger, denser populations and more complex economies than are found among foragers. New regulatory problems were created by these features and that gave rise to more complex relations and linkages.
*foragers (
hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...
):
band society
A band society, sometimes called a camp, or in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan. The general consensus of modern anthropol ...
*
horticulture
Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...
:
tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...
*
pastoralism:
chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political organization of people representation (politics), represented or government, governed by a tribal chief, chief. Chiefdoms have been discussed, depending on their scope, as a stateless society, stateless, state (polity) ...
*
agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
:
state
There have been many sociopolitical trends reflecting the increased regulatory demands associated with food production.
Archaeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
study these trends through time, and cultural
anthropologists observe them among contemporary groups.
References
*
Elman Service, ''Primitive Social Organization'' (1962), ''Profiles in Ethnology'' (1963), ''Origins of the State and Civilization'' (1975)
External links
Anthropology McGraw-Hill Online Learning CenterNon-State and State Societies
Anthropology
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