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The Segmentary State in Africa and Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Aidan Southall
Aidan Southall
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Extract

Segmentary state was the concept coined to fit Alur society into the theory of political anthropology of the 1940s. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard made the first giant step in the comparative analysis of African political systems, but supposedly centralized states and stateless segmentary lineage systems were the only ones to receive full consideration. Nadel had already distilled the voluminous Eurocentric literature on the theory and philosophy of the state, overburdened as it was with Hegelian growth, to produce a precise empirically oriented and workable definition of the state for anthropologists. Alur society did not fit or even approximate anywhere within the range of the model provided. But the model formulated in 1956 under Alur inspiration was an awkward and cumbersome derivation of Nadel's rather than a clear model in its own right. It would be simpler and better to define the segmentary state as one in which the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide. The former extends widely towards a flexible, changing periphery. The latter is confined to the central, core domain.

Type
Politics of Kinship
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 52 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1988

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References

1 This and all subsequent references to the Alur and their neighboring peoples involve information abridged from Southall, Aidan, Alur Society: A Study in Processes and Types of Domination (Cambridge: Heffer, 1956; and Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1972), supplemented by later visits and discussions with members of Alur society, to whom I am, as always, most deeply grateful.Google Scholar

2 African Political Systems, Fortes, Meyer and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds. (London: Oxford University Press, 1940).Google Scholar

3 Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 69.Google Scholar

4 This usage is supported by Larousse, Pierre, Grand Dictionnaire du XlXe. Siecle, Vol. XIV (Paris, 1875), despite the historical feudal emphasis of European thought.Google Scholar

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6 Stein, Burton, “The Segmentary State in South Indian History,”Google Scholar in Realm and Region, Fox, , ed., 1977;Google Scholar and Peasant, State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

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8 Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, The Colas (Madras: University of Madras, 1935–1937), 515.Google Scholar

9 Leach, E. R., Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and Northwest Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 4.Google Scholar

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11 Geertz, C., Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton University Press. 1980).Google Scholar

12 P. Ricoeur, “The Model of the Text”, in Interpretive Social Science, Rabinow, P. and Sullivan, W. M., eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).Google Scholar

13 It is impossible here to deal with the vast and controversial literature on the Asiatic mode of production, which can only be treated adequately in the context of other precapitalist modes of production and in consideration of the concept of mode of production itself. I have set out my approach to these questions in “Mode of Production Theory: The Foraging Mode of Production and the Kinship Mode of Production,” Dialectical Anthropology, 12:2 (1987),Google Scholar forthcoming. Here I simply explore the relevance and applicability of Karl Marx's seminal but fragmentary theoretical delineation (Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy [London: Allen Lane, 1973], 472–74).Google Scholar I am not for the moment concerned with Marx's consideration of the characteristics of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India and China in their decadence and confrontation with the capitalist Western world. Kathleen Gough shows in detail from her studies of Thanjavur—the heart of the old Cola Empire—how closely it conformed to the generally accepted characteristics of the Asiatic mode of production (Rural Society in Southeast India [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 113, 407), but it must be noted that Burton Stein does not agree with her interpretation.Google Scholar

Some arguments eliminate the Asiatic mode of production entirely. We have no space to deal with them in detail. Hindess and Hirst attempted a theory of modes of production totally insulated from any link with history, which they regarded as irredeemably ideological (Precapitalist Modes of Production [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975], 9–12).Google Scholar They were then led to abandon the concept altogether (Mode of Production and Social Formation [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977]).Google Scholar In “Marx' Concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production: A Genetic Analysis” (Economy and Society, 13:4 [1984], 456, 483),CrossRefGoogle Scholar Heinz Lubasz cites Lawrence Krader (The Asiatic Mode of Production: Sources, Development and Critique in the Writings of Karl Marx [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975], 304–17)Google Scholar as a “much gentler critique” in the mass of research and analysis from which he says we now know that “the concept of the Asiatic mode of production is empirically untenable and theoretically indefensible.” But this passage and the subsequent pages demonstrate irrefutably Krader's not uncritical acceptance of the concept as both empirically and theoretically fruitful and relevant.

14 Southall, Aidan. “The Illusion of Tribe,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 5:1–2 (1970), 28–50;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFried, Morton H., The Notion of Tribe (Menlo Park: Cummings, 1975).Google Scholar E. R. Service, in a series of publications, first promoted the notions of tribe and of chiefdom as evolutionary stages in a universal scheme, then abandoned it in the face of criticism, but unaccountably began to use it again later: see A Profile of Primitive Culture (New York: Harper, 1958);Google ScholarPrimitive Social Organization (New York: Random House, 1962);Google ScholarCultural Evolutionism (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971);Google ScholarPubMedOrigin of the State and Civilization (New York: Norton, 1975);Google ScholarProfiles in Ethnology (New York: Harper & Row, 1978);Google Scholar and with Cohen, R., Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978). The Service paradigm of tribe and chiefdom is still strongly entrenched in the teaching of archeology, though somewhat defensively if challenged.Google Scholar

15 Girling, F. K., The Acholi of Uganda, Colonial Research Studies no. 30 (London, H.M.S.O., 1960).Google Scholar

16 Many aspects of cultural and linguistic exchange, transmission, and borrowing remain mysterious and little studied. A case in point is the politico-religious concept of Rubanga, which appears over a very wide area, including Alur, Acoli, Madi, Teso, Bunyoro, and Buganda. It thus crosses profound linguistic as well as cultural boundaries. Its linguistic connections indicate a Bantu derivation and point to Bunyoro, but because both the linguistic qualities and cultural meanings of Rubanga undergo transformation from one part of the area to another, its message of cultural influence is complex. I have explored this in “Multilingualism and the Cross-cultural Study of Social Meanings,” in Language Use and Social Change, Whiteley, W. H., ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

17 Beanie's justly famous writings on Bunyoro properly concentrate on the contemporary Bunyoro of the time of his field work, when the Nyoro state had been reduced to a mere fragment of its former size by colonial conquest. In recent conversation with me, for which I am most grateful, John Beattie did not object to the idea of Bunyoro-Kitara as a segmentary state, held together by ritual suzerainty, with a centralized core, though he would probably phrase it in different terms, such as Weber's notions of sultanism and patrimonialism.

18 As Maurice Godelier has suggested: “For relations of domination and exploitation to have arisen and reproduced themselves durably in formerly classless societies, such relations must have presented themselves as an exchange and as an exchange of services. This was how they managed to get themselves accepted … and to gain the consent—passive or active—of the dominated. … The services rendered by the dominant individuals or group must have involved, in the first place, invisible realities and forces controlling (in the thought of these societies) the reproduction of the universe and of life. … The monopoly of the means (to us imaginary) of reproduction of the universe and of life must have preceded the monopoly of the visible material means of production.” “Infrastructures, Society and History,” Current Anthropology, 19:4 (1978), 767.Google Scholar

19 Stein, “Segmentary State,” 66, 123, 144.

20 Ibid., 79–83.

21 There was also a general norm that hunters killing elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo or antelope should send to the king one tusk, the lion or leopard skin, and one hind leg of buffalo or antelope. There was some difference of opinion between the king and the subordinate rulers as to which of the latter had the right to receive these offerings on their own—as was clearly recorded by the oral tradition for the kingdom of Paidha and some others. There is no evidence showing how frequently this norm was observed or transgressed. I conclude that it was not materially sufficient either to alter significantly the relationship of the king or the subordinate rulers to the means of production, or, given their remote position, to offer them the opportunity to develop a significant trade which would have done so. Such contributions may have been kept as prestige goods in the regalia of rulers and used for occasional ritual distribution between them or as offerings to major shrines.

22 “Hiving off” is my term. Each case tended to have its own descriptive characterization according to its special circumstances. For example, Paidha was named after the fact that the King of Ukuru said that his son Magwar had been “snatched away” (kidnapped) from him (juyudhiayudha—hence Payudha or Paidha) to become their ruler (Alur Society, p. 183). A frequent way of referring to the phenomenon was jubyeleabyela (they just carried him off on their shoulders). The other type was characterized by the ruler's command to an unruly son, “Go out there and subdue the country.” See Alur Society, pp. 181–89 on kidnapping and banishment, and 189–228 for a general account of the system.

23 For example, Wilson, Monica, Communal Rituals of the Nyakyusa (London: Oxford University Press for International African Institute, 1959).Google Scholar

24 Compare the fluctuating fortunes of rain shrines among the Plateau Tonga: Colson, Elizabeth, “Rain Shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia,” Africa, 18:3, (1948) 272–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Southall, “Mode of Production.”

26 Ambiguity arises because the state is a ritual rather than a political reality over much of its area most of the time. Hence the extraction of surplus from localities seems like an intrusion having an external quality, yet, on the other hand, it is a kind of payment for “free” access to economic resources. The extraction thus has the characteristics of rent but is obtained by political means, since the land has not become the private property of those who pay.

27 Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 472–73.

28 Gough, “Rural Society,” 105, 110, 113, 407–409.

29 Stein, Peasant, State and Society, 4.

30 Gough, “Rural Society.”

31 Stein, Peasant, State and Society, 24.

32 Ibid., 26.

33 Ibid., 39–41.

34 Ibid., 267.

35 Fox, ed., Urban India, 178.

36 Stein, Peasant, State and Society, 13.

37 Ibid., 47.

38 Fox, Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule, pp. 58–128.

39 Ibid., 138–40.

40 Ibid., 143.

41 Ibid., 138–40.

42 Stein, Peasant, State and Society, 146.

43 Ibid., III.

44 Ibid., 46.

45 Ekholm, Kajsa, Power and Prestige: The Rise and Fall of the Kongo Kingdom (Uppsala: Skriv Service AB, 1972), 12.Google Scholar

46 Wilson, Monica, Communal Rituals of the Nyakyusa, 7–29.Google Scholar

47 The Nyakyusa country was veiy fertile but extremely mountainous, thus favorable to productivity but very unfavorable to communication, even by comparison with the Atyak Alur, whose mountain terrain was much less extreme.

48 Monica Wilson, Communal Rituals of the Nyakyusa; and Wilson, Godfrey, The Constitution of Ng'onde (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939, 1968).Google Scholar

49 Godelier, “Infrastructures.”

50 There is also the aura of luxury and prestige, which exerted an irresistible attraction, both material and mystical, upon the “barbarians” to the north of both the Chinese and the Roman Empires.

51 Twitchett, D. C., Financial Administration under the T'ang Dynasty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 1–17, 124–39, 194–200.Google Scholar

52 Elvin, Mark, Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), 22: “The state retained a near monopoly over the means of force and so a true feudalism could never take hold.”Google Scholar

53 For example, Godelier, M., “D'un mode de production a l'autre: theorie de la transition,” Recherches sociologiques, 12:2 (1981), 161–93.Google Scholar

54 It is a live issue: “The discovery last summer of a skeleton in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania has raised speculation that an abrupt speed-up in human evolution took place about 1.6 million years ago.” New York Times Week in Review, 24 May 1987, 6.

55 Zagarell, Allen, “Structural Discontinuity—a Critical Factor in the Emergence of Primary and Secondary States,” Dialectical Anthropology, 10:2 (1986), 155, 157–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Kottak, C. P., “Ecological Variables in the Origin and Evolution of African States: The Buganda Example,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14:3 (1972), 351–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Such ethnographic information—even on practices that I could not witness or participate in, but learned about in detail from those who had actually lived them—may provide data on processes in a particular type of society that can illuminate the historical record of other times and places.