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Title: Review. “Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution. By Ronald Cohen and Elman Service, eds.” Author(s): M.G. Smith Source: In Man, n.s. 14 (3): 568-569

MAN THEJOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

NEW SERIES VOLUME 14 1979

Published quarterly by the Royal Anthropological Institute ofGreat Britain and Ireland REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS

competing theses ofService and Fried--each ofapproaches to the problem of state forma­ COHE.N: RONALD & ELMAN R. SERVICE (edt Or,~~ns of the. slate: the anthropol . ti ~llom contributes an essay. Service groups tions, both pristine and secondary, rather than p~/Jt~(al fvo/~tron. 2} 3 pp., iIlus., ~ ,u evolutionary speculations on the origin of in offering some simple, universal and unten­ blbhogr. PhIladelphia: Institute for dIr abc state into two contraposed clusters­ able solution. It should therefore prove of Study ofHuman Issues, 1978 aamely, conflict theories (e.g. Marx, Spencer interest and value to teachers and others Morton Fried) and integrative theories interested in contemporary views of the Speculative theses on the formation of .. Jnd (e.g. Service, Wittfogel and, oddly, Carneiro's origins ofstates. earliest states were regular features ofevoI. ltoceumscription' thesis, oddly, as Carneiro tionist social theories of the last century .. M.G. SMITH de2rlystresses war (e.g. pp. 207-1 reply, played little part in twentieth-centuryandu. I». In Yale University. fried cites laws and other data from early pol?gy until.the co~tributionsofV. Gordaa Mesopotamia that indicate social stratification. HARRIS, GRACE GREDYS. Casting out anger: Chllde, Leshe WhIte and Julian StewaN Ho\\'ever, as Cohen notes in his introductory religion among the Taita Kenya (Camb. together laid the basis for contemporary ... of If\;e\\' of the volume's various essays, these Stud. social Anthrop. 21). xiv, 193 pp., evolutionis~. However since 1967, ... kpl data are drawn from establishedsecond­ plates, tables, bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Morton Fned's Evolution of political S«iiit ary states in that region. They cannot be Press, 1978. £7-95 appeared, interest in this question has revitel created as descriptions ofthe antecedent society I have a special interest in Dr Harris's book. apace, and therewith our understanding ofdlr Jtgt created the pristine state. We may now For one thing, it began as a dissertation complexities so neatly hidden by such shan­ Drver recover decisive texts and supporting submitted for the doctorate in my Department hand terms as 'the origin of the SI3If-. &UU from the periods and sites of the few at Cambridge twenty-five years ago. At that Following Marx and Rousseau, Fried disba. .rced pristine states in either hemisphere to stage the descriptive ethnography of Taira guished between pristine and secondary staleS.. choose between the overlapping theories of religion was her primary concern. The book and argued that pristine states arose inChina, following inClClm ure position on this topic' (p. 15) and import. It is presented in classical monographic ofpopulation and contractions ofresourca.. terognises that 'there are multiple roads to style with analysis and interpretation tied specialised political organisations requiml. atehood' (p. 8), which may include tbe routes strictly to the particulars of the ethnographic preserve and defend the positions and inrerea Identified by Fried, Service, Carneiro and fieldwork. It is a short book (185 pages of ofthe propertied classes in societies that war­ adlers. text) written with admirable economy of already economically stratified. Therear. Of nine essays in this collection, only that language and conceptual clarity, and so tightly secondarystates werecreated by orin defemiw Or Eva and Robert Hunt on 'Irrigation, packed that I shall have to limit my comments reactions to the expansion of these p~ conflict and politics: a Mexican case' has been to the main theme. states. pttviously published. Henry W rightlts nicely Harris declares at the outset that she is 'more In 1968 Lawrence Krader reviewed .­ qued and illustrated contribution, 6Toward concerned with Taita religion as a mode of topic obliquely in his Formation ofthe Stalf._ III explanation of the origin of the state', is a acting in the world than as a mode ofthinking used few data. from the New W orId and ... It\'~d version of another published article. about the world'-which implies an approach not segregate pristine and secondary st2tIS. The essays by Salzman, Cohen, Barbara Price that I find particularly congenial and that is Fried had done. Krader concluded that Slat aod the Hunts all deal with contexts of the second reason for my interest in her book. originated in different ways at differing u.s Ittondarv state formations, in Iran, in North­ The actor, then, is at the centre of Harris's and places. Two years later Robert eama.t eastern Nigeria, and in Mexico respectively, en'Juiry. But first comes a description of the restated Herbert· Spenser's general thesis ­ md therefore do not contribute directly to the Tal.ta world, as it presented itself in the early the states evolved by processes of WU' • ~ raised by Fried, Carneiro and Service, fiftIes, when Alfred and Grace Harris carried geographically circumscribed regions suds • though they provide interesting materials, out their field study. The Taita habitat and Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus val1c1. ~r~aches and hypotheses. An essay by subsistence economy and their political and In 1975 Elman Service reconsidered .. V. nltg~~g Weissleder on 'Aristotle's concept cultural contacts with neighbouring tribes Origins of the state & civilization, criticid Of pohucal structure and the state' seems and coastal traders before the missionaries Morton Fried's hypothesis, and concluded" Knngely out of place in this company, even arrived in the 1880'S and the British Colonial the first states emerged in Meso~ government took over, are described in Egypt, the Indus valley, China, Peru" ~ Iklre so ,than Robert Carneiro's concluding e ~'hICh, outline. Then follows an account ofthe social Central America prior to the ~ :c on the principle of competitive structure. It cOInprised interlocking neigh­ stratification asserted by Fried, when~ elusion or survival of the fittest, projects a 2300 A.D. bour~oods and .villages based on criss-crossing craric chiefdoms with urban centres res~ "odd-state by agnatic, cognatIc and affinal connexions gen­ to internal and external threats by ~r~.·; What does the volume contribute to our ~rsta~ding erated by the 80 per cent. incidence of intra­ themselves with the consent of therr ofstate origins and formation? foretfeetivedefe.nce.Serviceexpli~dyin~ o an Immediate solution of the hoary village marriage. The village was dominated ~oblem by non-exogamous patrilineal ~ great lineages' popular perceptions of ritual, social and ~ ofhow or why the first four or five 'bt~ ' and was presided over by elders who derived benefits as the decisive condition for ~ n. arose, it makes little advance on Krader, their authority from their ritual status and sion ofthese antecedent theocracies intO ~ en though Henry Wright's essav. based on ~rc~ in southwesteTn Iran, 'is rich in control over the 'juridical rites' ofoath, ordeal fledged states. . .- and conditional curse. Last comes an outline of The alternatives advocated by Servt« -'ge)Uons which receive some support froln framew.or~ ~h~ OUter contributions on the fornlations of the religious domain. Each community had Fried i>rovide the for t:: Seers who transmitted demands from the collection ofessays. Carneuos thes~~---.l H'0neb.ry states by Barbara Price and the ~.t~. Creator and other mystical agencies such as discussed and Krader's contribution I~. Ho\vever, the real value of the book IS lSt~ In bringing together the present range the ancestors and the Great Medicines. There The volume therefore concentrates 011