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How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory
By studying chiefdoms―kin-based societies in which a person’s place in a kinship system determines his or her social status and political position―this book addresses several fundamental questions concerning the nature of political power and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. In a chiefdom, the highest-status male (first son by the first wife) holds both authority and special access to economic, military, and ideological power, and others derive privilege from their positions in the chiefly hierarchy. A chiefdom is also a regional polity with institutional governance and some social stratification organizing a population of a few thousand to tens of thousands of people. The author argues that the fundamental dynamics of chiefdoms are essentially the same as those of states, and that the origin of states is to be understood in the emergence and development of chiefdoms. The history of chiefdoms documents the evolutionary trajectories that resulted, in some situations, in the institutionalization of broad-scale, politically centralized societies and, in others, in highly fragmented and unstable regions of competitive polities. Understanding the dynamics of chiefly society, the author asserts, offers an essential view into the historical background of the modern world. Three cases on which the author has conducted extensive field research are used to develop the book’s arguments―Denmark during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages (2300-1300 b.c.), the high Andes of Peru from the early chiefdoms through the Inka conquest (a.d. 500-1534), and Hawaii from early in its settlement to its incorporation in the world economy (a.d. 800-1824). Rather than deal with each case separately, the author presents an integrated discussion around the different power sources. After summarizing the cultural history of the three societies over a thousand years, he considers the sources of chiefly power and how these sources were linked together. The ultimate aim of the book is to determine how chiefs came to power and the implications that contrasting paths to power had for the evolutionary trajectories of societies. It attributes particular importance to the way different power bases were bound together and grounded in the political economy.
270 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1997
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April 14, 2020
I would have given this book at least 4 stars for being - in my opinion - one of the most important books ever written in the field of anthropology, if it were not for the fundamental problems in both its theory and presentation that make it unworthy of a higher rating.
Books on the origins of economic inequality and modern state machinery are rare in anthropology as well as other subjects such as history and economics. And that's why I think it's unfortunate that Earle's first foray into the origins of modern statehood is as lackluster as it is.
Before I begin my review let me also mention that I intend to update this review as soon as I read Earle's later book, The Evolution of Human Societies, and another related book that other reviewers haven't mentioned - How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai'i.
That being said, let me now get into the aforementioned problems. The first chapter is nothing more than a wordy rundown of all the technical details of each chiefdom's ecology and archaeological evidence without reference to any of the cultural traits of the chiefdoms under discussion. It was painfully boring chapter to read. Earle is clearly in desperate need of some writing lessons. Fortunately, the book's theory is far superior to its presentation.
After a boring start in the first chapter, Earle's attempts to create a theory that seems to be an attempt to replace, or dare I say, dethrone Robert L. Caneiro's Circumscription Theory as the primary or most supported theory for the origin of statehood. But I think, given the evidence he presents through the 3 case study Kingdoms of Hawai'i, Peru, and Thy (Denmark), he would have done a better job of expanding Carneiro's Circumscription theory instead of attempting to supplant it with a new and unnamed theory.
The first mistake Earle makes in this book is not providing definitions for the following terms: chief, state, and king. He never explains what the difference between a king and a chief is. In Cannibals and Kings, Marvin Harris actually attempts to explain the difference between a king and a chief and in doing so he came far closer to providing a coherent definition of what a chief is than Earle did in this book. To make matters worse, Earle simply ignores Harris' definition for chiefdoms, which predates Earle's work by about 3 decades. According to Harris, a chief is a leading warrior who receives voluntary tributes - often in the form of staple foods - from the chiefdom he presides over, whereas a king receives involuntary or mandatory tributes in the form of taxes: be it food or currency, in the kingdom he presides over.
Earle argues that there are 3 sources of power that tribal warriors in all three case studies used to become tribal chiefs: economic power, military power, and ideological power. He asserts that economic power (such as staple finance or the control of all food supplies within a tribe or tribal territory) is a more stable source of power than ideological power, but he falls short of establishing a hierarchy of the most stable and least stable sources of power.
Earle fails to realize that all 3 sources of power are directly and inextricably linked to the monopoly on violence that a state needs to maintain in order to perpetuate its existence from one generation to another. While he concedes that tribal warriors often use all 3 sources of power to become chiefs and maintain their newfound chiefly power and also acknowledges the common argument among his peers that not everyone within a given state will believe in the state's ideology; he ignores the historical fact that ideologies can be a source of military power.
I think the problem with Earle's classification of power is that all forms of power ultimately boil down to wield violence power. Economic and ideological power are both sources of violent power. One cannot amass violent power without satisfying the economic needs and desires of one's army of warriors or civilians and sometimes one cannot prevent violent civil unrest without ideological support among the general population. In other words, both economic and ideological power ultimately become sources of military power when the power of violence is transferred from civilians to soldiers in the case of ideological power and when economic power is used to buy ought the military power of all potential soldiers within the nation's borders.
Earle's theory faces problems not just with its overall construction, but with its supporting evidence as well. Marvin Harris, in an earlier work called Cannibals and Kings, gave examples of how kings in hydraulic societies like Pharaonic Egypt turned an economic monopoly on the supply of water into absolute political dictatorships. Control over the River Nile gave Egyptian pharaohs absolute power. Earle missed an opportunity to cite Harris' description of despotism in hydraulic societies as evidence as to why economic power is the most stable source of political power. The fact that the dynasties of hydraulic kingdoms lasted for thousands of years, as Harris pointed out, is a testament to the stability of economic power.
Earle fails to realize that all 3 sources of power are directly and inextricably linked to the monopoly on violence that a state needs to maintain in order to perpetuate its existence from one generation to another. While he concedes that tribal warriors often use all 3 sources of power to become chiefs and maintain their newfound chiefly power and also acknowledges the common argument among his peers that not everyone within a given state will believe in the state's ideology; he ignores the historical fact that ideologies can be a source of military power.
In China's Taiping rebellion, for example, a former peasant and self-proclaimed messiah by the name of Hong Xiuquan amassed an army of followers and led the Hakka tribe against the dominant Qing dynasty whose royal members were from the then dominant Manchu tribe. If it were not for the fact that he discovered that he could use weaponize Christianity against the ruling Confuscianist kingdom, Xiuquan may have never dared to launch such a rebellion in the first place. Social discontent among peasants stemming from the economic hardship they faced made Christianity a viable source of military power for Xiuquan when he was alive, but that does not mean that religion is not a good of source of violent power be it through the trained military force of a militia or the spontaneous violence of a peasant uprising. On the contrary, it means that religion is a valuable source of violent power under right socioeconomic conditions. It could be the case that people are more willing to violently support religious doctrines when faced with poverty.
When discussing ideology as a source of power, Earle gives examples of scholars who argue that people - specifically slaves and the working class - do not believe the ideology of the ruling elite. But this is an all-or-nothing argument that cannot be applied to reality. In reality, most people, regardless of their political or economic status, believe in the ideology produced by the ruling class to some degree if not in its entirety. And a small minority of people believe in the ruling class ideology in its entirety. The problem is that Earle, once again, does not want to look at any other evidence besides archaeological evidence to support his thesis.
He could have discussed political polls to show the degree to which people of any given nation believe in the ruling class ideology. Of course, political polls would force Earle to look at non-archaeological evidence, which he seems to be very reluctant to do. Some may argue that the veracity of political polls maybe more debatable and, perhaps, more questionable than the interpretation of any given set of archaeological evidence. But regardless of how political opinions are measured, the fact that remains that Earle provides no evidence that ideologies do not have widespread appeal other than the personal opinions of his fellow researchers.
Earle also seems unwilling to recognize ideology as a source of violent power, because doing so would once again require him to look beyond archaeological evidence. It appears that he is generally unwilling, for whatever reason, to use a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing chiefdoms. He relies entirely on archaeological evidence to support his unnamed theory of chiefdoms to his own detriment and understandably so. He may believe that it's harder to convincingly separate all the cultural variables behind the written histories of warring chiefdoms than it is to analyze the few variables behind the archaeological evidence behind the geographically isolated prehistoric chiefdoms he has chosen to analyze.
Books on the origins of economic inequality and modern state machinery are rare in anthropology as well as other subjects such as history and economics. And that's why I think it's unfortunate that Earle's first foray into the origins of modern statehood is as lackluster as it is.
Before I begin my review let me also mention that I intend to update this review as soon as I read Earle's later book, The Evolution of Human Societies, and another related book that other reviewers haven't mentioned - How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai'i.
That being said, let me now get into the aforementioned problems. The first chapter is nothing more than a wordy rundown of all the technical details of each chiefdom's ecology and archaeological evidence without reference to any of the cultural traits of the chiefdoms under discussion. It was painfully boring chapter to read. Earle is clearly in desperate need of some writing lessons. Fortunately, the book's theory is far superior to its presentation.
After a boring start in the first chapter, Earle's attempts to create a theory that seems to be an attempt to replace, or dare I say, dethrone Robert L. Caneiro's Circumscription Theory as the primary or most supported theory for the origin of statehood. But I think, given the evidence he presents through the 3 case study Kingdoms of Hawai'i, Peru, and Thy (Denmark), he would have done a better job of expanding Carneiro's Circumscription theory instead of attempting to supplant it with a new and unnamed theory.
The first mistake Earle makes in this book is not providing definitions for the following terms: chief, state, and king. He never explains what the difference between a king and a chief is. In Cannibals and Kings, Marvin Harris actually attempts to explain the difference between a king and a chief and in doing so he came far closer to providing a coherent definition of what a chief is than Earle did in this book. To make matters worse, Earle simply ignores Harris' definition for chiefdoms, which predates Earle's work by about 3 decades. According to Harris, a chief is a leading warrior who receives voluntary tributes - often in the form of staple foods - from the chiefdom he presides over, whereas a king receives involuntary or mandatory tributes in the form of taxes: be it food or currency, in the kingdom he presides over.
Earle argues that there are 3 sources of power that tribal warriors in all three case studies used to become tribal chiefs: economic power, military power, and ideological power. He asserts that economic power (such as staple finance or the control of all food supplies within a tribe or tribal territory) is a more stable source of power than ideological power, but he falls short of establishing a hierarchy of the most stable and least stable sources of power.
Earle fails to realize that all 3 sources of power are directly and inextricably linked to the monopoly on violence that a state needs to maintain in order to perpetuate its existence from one generation to another. While he concedes that tribal warriors often use all 3 sources of power to become chiefs and maintain their newfound chiefly power and also acknowledges the common argument among his peers that not everyone within a given state will believe in the state's ideology; he ignores the historical fact that ideologies can be a source of military power.
I think the problem with Earle's classification of power is that all forms of power ultimately boil down to wield violence power. Economic and ideological power are both sources of violent power. One cannot amass violent power without satisfying the economic needs and desires of one's army of warriors or civilians and sometimes one cannot prevent violent civil unrest without ideological support among the general population. In other words, both economic and ideological power ultimately become sources of military power when the power of violence is transferred from civilians to soldiers in the case of ideological power and when economic power is used to buy ought the military power of all potential soldiers within the nation's borders.
Earle's theory faces problems not just with its overall construction, but with its supporting evidence as well. Marvin Harris, in an earlier work called Cannibals and Kings, gave examples of how kings in hydraulic societies like Pharaonic Egypt turned an economic monopoly on the supply of water into absolute political dictatorships. Control over the River Nile gave Egyptian pharaohs absolute power. Earle missed an opportunity to cite Harris' description of despotism in hydraulic societies as evidence as to why economic power is the most stable source of political power. The fact that the dynasties of hydraulic kingdoms lasted for thousands of years, as Harris pointed out, is a testament to the stability of economic power.
Earle fails to realize that all 3 sources of power are directly and inextricably linked to the monopoly on violence that a state needs to maintain in order to perpetuate its existence from one generation to another. While he concedes that tribal warriors often use all 3 sources of power to become chiefs and maintain their newfound chiefly power and also acknowledges the common argument among his peers that not everyone within a given state will believe in the state's ideology; he ignores the historical fact that ideologies can be a source of military power.
In China's Taiping rebellion, for example, a former peasant and self-proclaimed messiah by the name of Hong Xiuquan amassed an army of followers and led the Hakka tribe against the dominant Qing dynasty whose royal members were from the then dominant Manchu tribe. If it were not for the fact that he discovered that he could use weaponize Christianity against the ruling Confuscianist kingdom, Xiuquan may have never dared to launch such a rebellion in the first place. Social discontent among peasants stemming from the economic hardship they faced made Christianity a viable source of military power for Xiuquan when he was alive, but that does not mean that religion is not a good of source of violent power be it through the trained military force of a militia or the spontaneous violence of a peasant uprising. On the contrary, it means that religion is a valuable source of violent power under right socioeconomic conditions. It could be the case that people are more willing to violently support religious doctrines when faced with poverty.
When discussing ideology as a source of power, Earle gives examples of scholars who argue that people - specifically slaves and the working class - do not believe the ideology of the ruling elite. But this is an all-or-nothing argument that cannot be applied to reality. In reality, most people, regardless of their political or economic status, believe in the ideology produced by the ruling class to some degree if not in its entirety. And a small minority of people believe in the ruling class ideology in its entirety. The problem is that Earle, once again, does not want to look at any other evidence besides archaeological evidence to support his thesis.
He could have discussed political polls to show the degree to which people of any given nation believe in the ruling class ideology. Of course, political polls would force Earle to look at non-archaeological evidence, which he seems to be very reluctant to do. Some may argue that the veracity of political polls maybe more debatable and, perhaps, more questionable than the interpretation of any given set of archaeological evidence. But regardless of how political opinions are measured, the fact that remains that Earle provides no evidence that ideologies do not have widespread appeal other than the personal opinions of his fellow researchers.
Earle also seems unwilling to recognize ideology as a source of violent power, because doing so would once again require him to look beyond archaeological evidence. It appears that he is generally unwilling, for whatever reason, to use a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing chiefdoms. He relies entirely on archaeological evidence to support his unnamed theory of chiefdoms to his own detriment and understandably so. He may believe that it's harder to convincingly separate all the cultural variables behind the written histories of warring chiefdoms than it is to analyze the few variables behind the archaeological evidence behind the geographically isolated prehistoric chiefdoms he has chosen to analyze.
February 20, 2026
Sınıflı toplumun ve devletin kökenlerini, şeflik sistemlerinin ekonomi-politiği üzerinden inceleyen, Engels'in tezlerini modern antropolojik verilerle destekleyen bir çalışma. Earle, iktidarın kaynağının, artı-ürüne el koyma, ideolojiyi kontrol etme ve askeri güç kullanma yeteneğinde yattığını Danimarka, Hawaii ve And Dağları örnekleriyle gösterir. Eşitsizliğin "doğal" olmadığını, ekonomik ve stratejik süreçlerle nasıl kurumsallaştığını anlatan materyalist bir tarih öncesi analizi.
April 9, 2012
"How Chiefs Come to Power" is a more thorough and somewhat more modern look at the chiefdom category examined in Earle's earlier book, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Earle's premise changed slightly over the decade between the two. No longer does he assert that population density drives all change. However, while the increased nuance is appreciated, I'm not convinced that this book represents a substantial explanatory advance over the previous work.
In this book, Earle focuses on only three case studies at this narrow margin of political "evolution" - from big men collectivities to chiefdoms, more or less. He expounds on their archaeological histories in much greater detail than he did in "Evolution." This seems to have been at the expense of thesis-driven argument. His analyses are well-made and credible, but often seem to elide interesting discussions that were addressed in the other work.
For instance, the way that bronze imports allowed a chief class to take power in Thy, Denmark is logical enough, but Earle never discusses the logic that moving to a herding system to support this economic endeavor might have for the non-chief class, a perspective I found very enlightening in "Evolution."
In another, perhaps more irresponsible case, Earle discusses the transition from warring neighbor states to the Inka empire and the consequences this had for political economy, but never addresses why this transition might have come about. In "Evolution," he claims that gradually rising population densities finally allowed one group to dominate the rest, bringing the area to the new stable state of empire. Earle never addresses this or the evidence for it one way or another in this book.
In other ways, Earle's treatment here does benefit from the greater nuance of age, experience, or more modern paradigms. He explores the mutually complementary nature of economic, military, and ideological power and shows how each can be more or less crucial in different ecological situations. He thus still establishes clear connections between the political state of the group and factors that aren't exclusively cultural like climatic and soil conditions, trade networks, etc. He does sometimes seem to go too far in discrediting population. He explains that warfare in the Wanka highlands isn't correlated with changes in population, so therefore warfare must not be caused by competition over scarce resources. Yet at the same time, he tells us that the Wanka themselves assert that warfare is done in order to take land and women - clearly, competition for scarce resources, which is of course driven by population density in combination with cultural factors.
In this book, Earle focuses on only three case studies at this narrow margin of political "evolution" - from big men collectivities to chiefdoms, more or less. He expounds on their archaeological histories in much greater detail than he did in "Evolution." This seems to have been at the expense of thesis-driven argument. His analyses are well-made and credible, but often seem to elide interesting discussions that were addressed in the other work.
For instance, the way that bronze imports allowed a chief class to take power in Thy, Denmark is logical enough, but Earle never discusses the logic that moving to a herding system to support this economic endeavor might have for the non-chief class, a perspective I found very enlightening in "Evolution."
In another, perhaps more irresponsible case, Earle discusses the transition from warring neighbor states to the Inka empire and the consequences this had for political economy, but never addresses why this transition might have come about. In "Evolution," he claims that gradually rising population densities finally allowed one group to dominate the rest, bringing the area to the new stable state of empire. Earle never addresses this or the evidence for it one way or another in this book.
In other ways, Earle's treatment here does benefit from the greater nuance of age, experience, or more modern paradigms. He explores the mutually complementary nature of economic, military, and ideological power and shows how each can be more or less crucial in different ecological situations. He thus still establishes clear connections between the political state of the group and factors that aren't exclusively cultural like climatic and soil conditions, trade networks, etc. He does sometimes seem to go too far in discrediting population. He explains that warfare in the Wanka highlands isn't correlated with changes in population, so therefore warfare must not be caused by competition over scarce resources. Yet at the same time, he tells us that the Wanka themselves assert that warfare is done in order to take land and women - clearly, competition for scarce resources, which is of course driven by population density in combination with cultural factors.
January 19, 2022
I appreciate the present-tense verb "Come" in the title, regardless of the fact that most of the information in the book is historical. It reminds me that Earle takes a very forward-thinking approach! I loved it.
March 16, 2021
Danimarka, Peru ve Hawaii'deki toplulukların yönetimlerini inceleyerek iktidarın kaynaklarının nereden geldiğini inceliyor. Siyasal antropoloji için temel bir kaynak.
November 21, 2025
i don’t know… i just like earle. read this comparatively and it was comparatively great. came and saw and conquered, even read non required chapters.
July 21, 2016
To make it absolutely clear, my personal appreciation of only two stars is not a comment on the research techniques and theories but rather how I appreciated the book as a reading experience for fun and intrigue in the subject of pre modern society hierarchies/leadership. I would lie if I were to say it did not disappoint me.
It disappointed me on two fronts, it did not really succeed in bringing the three cases (the pre inca Waimea vally culture; western Denmark in the early Bronze period and Hawaii up until the conquest by king Kamehameha) together. the introduction promised to prove how studying these chieftainship cultures together would help us understand them better and strictly speaking it did but in the end it still felt as a collection of three case studies rather than a whole. The second disappointment was a half made promise that the lessons learned from studying these chieftain cultures would help us better understand elite roles in modern society. Again, kinda it did, but it did not gave me huge new insights I was led to believe I would gain from the this publication. I did find interesting how Early points out that elite ideology as a justification for the way society functions should not be perceived as readily accepted by commoners in the society, ideology is constructed as something in need to be made real, materialized as the author puts it, to be able to have effect. that was a refreshing observation I will put to heart.
Not that I did not like the book at all mind you, it is a well written, well documented book and the three case studies are intriguing in itself! It is just that a book of this sort needs to be more than a text trip to exotic times and places and to be dazzled by names, customs and ways of life, it needs to help me understand better human nature and there as said before the book was bit of a letdown. The main lesson being that there are many ways to obtain power each way dependent on various kinship, economic, military and ideological structures interlinked with the historical development of society in a defined ecosystem resulting in systems all called chieftain-ship's but radically different for all involved in terms of functioning and limitations. Interesting but I read this message before and I was not as surprised as I could have been before. What I did find fascinating were the descriptions of life on Hawaii, I for one did not know irrigation farming was so widespread, the population so dense and war so endemic, nor did I know the amount of power their chiefs could amass (on the start I had expected the pre inca peru chieftains to be the most powerful followed by the danish and lastly the Hawaii rulers, it was a surprise to the discover the reverse to be the case). This book has inspired me to deep deeper into the polynesian history and society/culture to correct the erroneous views I have of this complex culture.
In conclusion not a bad book and did have it's moments but it is geared towards those actively involved in the subject matter (the cultures studied or study of pre modern societies) rather than a broad audience and to me that was a limitation on my level of enjoyment. The observations made to existing theories in cultural studies are interesting beyond doubt, such as on the relation between intensification of food production and population increase as directly linked was shown to be not a consistent societal rule (intensification could very well be served to elites rather than expanding communities). But all in all Early failed to make me fully appreciate the gravity of this conclusion. However as said it does have it's moments and it did made me realize I still have serious gaps in my knowledge of world history. I will take to heart besides the theories mentioned above, the models presented and worked out in detail, that of the hill fort chiefdom (Waimea), prestige good chiefdom (Bronze age denmark) and staple finance chiefdom (Hawaii). Models whom are all interesting and thanks to which I will remember and more easily envision how societies as these function and differ from one another and that made it all worthwhile.
It disappointed me on two fronts, it did not really succeed in bringing the three cases (the pre inca Waimea vally culture; western Denmark in the early Bronze period and Hawaii up until the conquest by king Kamehameha) together. the introduction promised to prove how studying these chieftainship cultures together would help us understand them better and strictly speaking it did but in the end it still felt as a collection of three case studies rather than a whole. The second disappointment was a half made promise that the lessons learned from studying these chieftain cultures would help us better understand elite roles in modern society. Again, kinda it did, but it did not gave me huge new insights I was led to believe I would gain from the this publication. I did find interesting how Early points out that elite ideology as a justification for the way society functions should not be perceived as readily accepted by commoners in the society, ideology is constructed as something in need to be made real, materialized as the author puts it, to be able to have effect. that was a refreshing observation I will put to heart.
Not that I did not like the book at all mind you, it is a well written, well documented book and the three case studies are intriguing in itself! It is just that a book of this sort needs to be more than a text trip to exotic times and places and to be dazzled by names, customs and ways of life, it needs to help me understand better human nature and there as said before the book was bit of a letdown. The main lesson being that there are many ways to obtain power each way dependent on various kinship, economic, military and ideological structures interlinked with the historical development of society in a defined ecosystem resulting in systems all called chieftain-ship's but radically different for all involved in terms of functioning and limitations. Interesting but I read this message before and I was not as surprised as I could have been before. What I did find fascinating were the descriptions of life on Hawaii, I for one did not know irrigation farming was so widespread, the population so dense and war so endemic, nor did I know the amount of power their chiefs could amass (on the start I had expected the pre inca peru chieftains to be the most powerful followed by the danish and lastly the Hawaii rulers, it was a surprise to the discover the reverse to be the case). This book has inspired me to deep deeper into the polynesian history and society/culture to correct the erroneous views I have of this complex culture.
In conclusion not a bad book and did have it's moments but it is geared towards those actively involved in the subject matter (the cultures studied or study of pre modern societies) rather than a broad audience and to me that was a limitation on my level of enjoyment. The observations made to existing theories in cultural studies are interesting beyond doubt, such as on the relation between intensification of food production and population increase as directly linked was shown to be not a consistent societal rule (intensification could very well be served to elites rather than expanding communities). But all in all Early failed to make me fully appreciate the gravity of this conclusion. However as said it does have it's moments and it did made me realize I still have serious gaps in my knowledge of world history. I will take to heart besides the theories mentioned above, the models presented and worked out in detail, that of the hill fort chiefdom (Waimea), prestige good chiefdom (Bronze age denmark) and staple finance chiefdom (Hawaii). Models whom are all interesting and thanks to which I will remember and more easily envision how societies as these function and differ from one another and that made it all worthwhile.
May 23, 2023
tl;dr chiefs came to power by controlling the economy, the military, and ideology, but the economy was most important for the consolidation of that power, because the economy is the material basis on which everything else rests. also chiefdoms were perpetually at war.
oh and Service was wrong apparently lmao
focuses on *how* leaders come to power and how that power is institutionalized, but not *why* -> "Following a political logic, I believe that the personal benefits of leadership are sufficient to explain the quest for prestige and dominance. ...I simply assume that some individuals within all societies seek political advantage."
--"A close examination of history indicates that only a coercive theory can account for the rise of the state. Force, and not enlightened self-interest, is the mechanism by which political evolution has led, step by step, from autonomous villages to the state."
--"...the creation of politically expansive and centralised institutions requires that the available sources of power be rooted in economic control. There is no necessity or inevitability of political centralisation; as we shall see, Hawaiian chiefs governed strongly centralised institutions, while Peruvian Wanka chiefdoms remained fragmented."
--"What I have attempted to show is that a general theory of social evolution can begin with the study of what factors determine the success (or failure) of leaders attempting to centralise and thus control social systems."
--"Hill-fort chiefdoms: Among the Wanka, where agricultural Intensification was limited, social power rested primarily on military might. ...Such chiefdoms have little ideological elaboration, with little ceremonial architecture and few elaborate individual burials."
--"Prestige-good chiefdoms: Among the Thy chiefdoms, the impoverished soils supported the development of an export economy that connected the region's elite to a broad international exchange. These societies depended on prestige-goods exchange, the wealth of which materialised a ruling ideology and acted as a political currency to finance the leadership. ...Reliance on international prestige-goods exchange made local societies vulnerable to forces beyond the influence of local action, and chiefdoms rose and fell rapidly."
--"Staple-finance chiefdoms: In Hawai'i, chiefs created an intensive production system relying on irrigation, dryland terraces, and fishponds. Owned by the chief's, these facilities became the basis of a Staple-finance economy in which surplus was mobilised and invested strategically in sustained agricultural development and in alternative sources of power. In this case, staple-finance chiefdoms demonstrated sustained development and the strengthening of central institutional control that took them to the very edge of state society."
--"Different environments, economies, and societies have fundamentally different evolutionary trajectories. In some cases strong central authorities develop, able to control effectively the multiple sources of power. In other cases control is weak and centralisation remains unstable or little elaborated."
--"But if the political economy cannot be centrally controlled the various sources of power also are difficult to control, and multicentric societies develop. ...Attempts to extend and resist central power characterise social evolution, and the means to finance political rivalries in social life profoundly affect long-term evolutionary trajectory."
oh and Service was wrong apparently lmao
focuses on *how* leaders come to power and how that power is institutionalized, but not *why* -> "Following a political logic, I believe that the personal benefits of leadership are sufficient to explain the quest for prestige and dominance. ...I simply assume that some individuals within all societies seek political advantage."
--"A close examination of history indicates that only a coercive theory can account for the rise of the state. Force, and not enlightened self-interest, is the mechanism by which political evolution has led, step by step, from autonomous villages to the state."
--"...the creation of politically expansive and centralised institutions requires that the available sources of power be rooted in economic control. There is no necessity or inevitability of political centralisation; as we shall see, Hawaiian chiefs governed strongly centralised institutions, while Peruvian Wanka chiefdoms remained fragmented."
--"What I have attempted to show is that a general theory of social evolution can begin with the study of what factors determine the success (or failure) of leaders attempting to centralise and thus control social systems."
--"Hill-fort chiefdoms: Among the Wanka, where agricultural Intensification was limited, social power rested primarily on military might. ...Such chiefdoms have little ideological elaboration, with little ceremonial architecture and few elaborate individual burials."
--"Prestige-good chiefdoms: Among the Thy chiefdoms, the impoverished soils supported the development of an export economy that connected the region's elite to a broad international exchange. These societies depended on prestige-goods exchange, the wealth of which materialised a ruling ideology and acted as a political currency to finance the leadership. ...Reliance on international prestige-goods exchange made local societies vulnerable to forces beyond the influence of local action, and chiefdoms rose and fell rapidly."
--"Staple-finance chiefdoms: In Hawai'i, chiefs created an intensive production system relying on irrigation, dryland terraces, and fishponds. Owned by the chief's, these facilities became the basis of a Staple-finance economy in which surplus was mobilised and invested strategically in sustained agricultural development and in alternative sources of power. In this case, staple-finance chiefdoms demonstrated sustained development and the strengthening of central institutional control that took them to the very edge of state society."
--"Different environments, economies, and societies have fundamentally different evolutionary trajectories. In some cases strong central authorities develop, able to control effectively the multiple sources of power. In other cases control is weak and centralisation remains unstable or little elaborated."
--"But if the political economy cannot be centrally controlled the various sources of power also are difficult to control, and multicentric societies develop. ...Attempts to extend and resist central power characterise social evolution, and the means to finance political rivalries in social life profoundly affect long-term evolutionary trajectory."
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