Politics, Race, and Religion

1
Politics, Race, and Religion
Teotihuacán, Mexico
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Origin of Cities and States

• Around 6,000 B.C. is the first evidence of a
  great transformation in the quality and scale of
  human life.
• differences in status among households
• differences in size of communities
• craft specialization
• extended political authority
• Around 3,500 B.C., most of the conventional
  characteristics of civilization arose
• writing
• cities
• full-time craft specialization
• monumental architecture
• differences in wealth and status
• strong, hierarchical, centralized political
  system (state)

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First Civilizations

• Near East 3,500 B.C.
• NW India 2,500 B.C.
• Northern China 1,750 B.C.
• Mexico/Peru 300 B.C.
• Africa 800 A.D.
• This chapter covers
• Why did civilizations evolve?
• What conditions favored establishment of states?
• What conditions favored establishment of cities?

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Archaeological Inferences

• How do we know that people had social classes,
  cities, or centralized government?
• burial remains can indicate social inequality
• differences in house size and furnishings
• hierarchical decision making
• most people not directly involved in food
  production
• full-time religious or craft specialists
• public buildings
• official art style
• hierarchical social structure with an elite
• government claims monopoly on force

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Archaeological Inferences

• State Centralized political hierarchy with at
  least three levels of administration. A state is
  a society with a formal, central government, and
  a division of society into classes. A state
  controls specific regional territory.
• How can we tell whether a society was a state or
  not?
• differing size of settlements
• evidence of trade

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First States - Southern Iraq

• Sumer, near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in
  southern Iraq, is the location of some of the
  earliest cities and states.
• By 6,000 B.C., a herding-farming economy
  developed.
• From 5,000 to 3,500 B.C., many changes took place
  that played a part in later creating cities and
  states in this area.
• small-scale irrigation
• increasingly complex social and political
• life (burial, special goods, temples, chiefdoms)
• By 3,500 B.C., there were quite a few
• cities at Sumer.
• Documents indicate numerous social classes.
• Sumerians had an elaborate (and one of the
• first) writing systems - cuneiform, or wedge-
• shaped writing shown at right.

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First States - Mesoamerica

• Mesoamerica Mexico and Central America
• later emergence of agriculture later emergence
  of states
• Teotihuacán is one of the earliest states in
  Mesoamerica.
• Located in NE part of Valley of Mexico
• Around 1,000 to 300 B.C., characterized by small,
  scattered farming villages.
• Between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C., elite centers
  emerged.
• Within 600 years, population went from about
  3,000 people to 100,000 people.
• City layout indicates enormous planning.
• Monte Albán - 500 B.C. in Valley of Oaxaca
• Probably began as a neutral place for political
  units to meet.

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States in the Valley of Mexico
Major sites in the emergence of food production
and the state in Mesoamerica.
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First States - Other Areas

• Other state societies rose more or less
  independently, meaning they emerged without
  colonization or conquest by other states.
• Egypt - 3,100 B.C.
• Ethiopia (Axum) - 1,000 A.D.
• Western Africa (Ghana) - 800 A.D.
• India (Harappan) - 2,300 B.C.
• China (Shang and Xia) - 1,750 B.C. and 2,200 B.C.
• Peru (Moche and Nazca) - 200 B.C.
• North America (Cahokia) - 1,000 A.D.

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Early States
Map showing the four great early river valley
states of the Old World.
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Origin of States - Theories

• Irrigation
• labor and management
• lead to unequal access to productive land
• border disputes lead to need for defense
• Population Growth, Circumscription, and War
• population growth leads to warfare and
  competition
• social circumscription prevents migration
• Local and Long-Distance Trade
• organizational and defense requirements

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Consequences of State Formation

• Positives
• larger and denser population allowances
• people freed to become craftspeople, merchants,
  artists
• art, music, and literature flourish
• organized religion develops
• Negatives (à la Jared Diamond)
• people cant refuse government (oppression and
  force)
• class stratification
• health issues worsen
• malnutrition or starvation from lack of access to
  resources
• state warfare and conquest

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Decline and Collapse of States

• Environmental Degradation
• natural causes (e.g., drought)
• behavior of humans
• depletion of natural resources
• change in soil content
• increase in incidence of disease (e.g., yellow
  fever)
• overextension of state
• conflict - internal or external

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Equality and Inequality

• Equality before law is the ideal, not the
  reality.
• Inequality is present more in socially stratified
  societies, when people have unequal access to
  economic or natural resources, power, and
  prestige.
• Three types of societies in terms of which social
  groups have unequal access to advantages
  egalitarian, rank, and class societies.

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Egalitarian Societies

• Egalitarian societies are those in which access
  to resources, power, and prestige is more or less
  equal among social groups. Does not mean that
  all people in the society were treated the same
  way.
• Egalitarianism characterized most of human
  history.
• Found among foragers and horticulturists
• Prestige and high positions are not inheritable
  keeps inequality to a minimum.
• Economic resources are shared (food), and even
  tools and weapons are passed from person to
  person.

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Rank Societies

• Rank societies do not have very unequal access to
  economic resources or to power, but they do
  contain social groups with unequal access to
  prestige. Rank societies are partly stratified.
• Most societies with ranking practice agriculture
  or herding.
• The position of chief is at least partly
  hereditary.

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Class Societies

• Class societies have unequal access to all three
  advantages--economic resources, power, and
  prestige.
• Class is a category of people who all have about
  the same opportunity to obtain economic
  resources, power, and prestige.
• Kinds of class systems
• open - U.S.
• caste - India, Japan
• slavery - formerly in U.S., Egypt, Greece,
  Africa, etc.

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Race and Ethnicity

• Race is a social category, and racism is born out
  of extreme ethnocentrism.
• Cultural anthropologists completely reject the
  idea of race, while some physical
  anthropologists, especially forensic
  anthropologists, hold on to some distinguishing
  biological characteristics (but omit any judgment
  based on them).
• AAA race statement

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Political Life

• Political life involves even more than government
  and politics. It also involves ways of
  preventing or resolving troubles and disputes
  both within and outside the society.
• Formal governments have become pervasive in the
  last 100 years all over the world.
• Particularly focused on activities and beliefs
  pertaining to territorial groups.
• Variation in types
• Service - band, tribe, chiefdom, state

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Band Organization

• A band is a small (lt 100 people) and usually
  nomadic group of people, which is politically
  autonomous.
• Mostly subsist by food collecting
• Egalitarian in nature
• Little or no political organization
• informal leadership

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Tribe Organization

• A tribe results when local communities mostly act
  autonomously but when there are kinship groups
  that can potentially integrate several local
  groups into a larger unit.
• Subsistence pattern is that of agriculture and/or
  herding.
• Small community size, low population density
• Egalitarian in nature
• Little or no political organization
• informal leadership

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Chiefdom Organization

• A chiefdom has some formal structure that
  integrates more than one community into a
  political unit.
• Most commonly, there is a person--a chief--who
  has a higher rank or authority than others.
• Subsistence pattern is intensive agriculture
  and/or herding
• Large communities with medium population density
• Usually rank societies
• Some political organization

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State Organization

• A state is an autonomous political unit,
  encompassing many communities within its
  territory and having a centralized government
  with the power to collect taxes, draft men for
  work or war, and decree and enforce laws.
• Usually have intensive agriculture and herding
• Population is concentrated in cities and towns
• Can have a class or caste society
• High degree of political organization

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Religion - Definitions

• Religion can be defined as any set of attitudes,
  beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural
  power, whether that power be forces, gods,
  spirits, ghosts, or demons.
• What is considered the supernatural varies from
  one society to the next.
• Many societies dont have a separate word for
  religion--it is so integrated into politics, or
  cultural identity, as with the ancient Greeks.

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Universality of Religion

• Religious beliefs and practices are found in all
  known societies.
• Oldest signs of religion date to at least 60,000
  years BP, when people buried their dead and gave
  offerings to the deceased.
• Neandertal evidence could put this invention
  earlier.
• Herodotus, 5th century B.C., compared 50
  societies
• Anthropologists are not interested in what
  specifically is believed in a culture, but why
  religion is found in all societies and how and
  why it varies from society to society.

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Theories of Religion

• There are four main theories of why religion is
  created in society
• Need to understand (Tylor)
• Reversion to childhood feelings (Freud)
• Anxiety and uncertainty (Malinowski)
• Need for community (Durkheim)

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Variation in Religious Beliefs

• Types of supernatural beings
• supernatural forces (mana, taboo)
• supernatural beings (gods, spirits, ghosts,
  ancestor spirits)
• Character of supernatural beings
• projection of parent-child relationship
  (all-knowing)
• Structure or hierarchy of supernatural beings
• monotheistic, polytheistic
• Intervention of the gods in human affairs
• Life after death

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Variation in Religious Practices

• Ways to interact with the supernatural
• prayer
• doing things to the body or mind
• simulation
• feasts
• sacrifices
• Magic
• witchcraft and sorcery
• Types of practitioner
• shaman
• sorcerers and witches
• mediums
• priests

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Religion and Adaptation

• Malinowski - Religions are adaptive because they
  reduce anxieties and uncertainties that afflict
  all people.
• Harris - Religion can be adaptive in its taboos
  and rules.
• Hindu sacred cow example
• Religious change as revitalization