Lethal Retaliation as a Powerful Levelling Mechanism in Egalitarian Societies
Contextual Quote
"The findings of this survey support the hypothesis that an egalitarian relation between followers and their leader is deliberately made to happen by collectively assertive followers."
- Christopher Boehm [1]
Discussion
Christopher Boehm:
"The ultimate egalitarian political rebuke is to terminate a person's leadership role. The final solution is assassination; in bands or tribes that do not feud, an entire community can do this readily in the absence of "bodyguards" or a loyal "police force." Woodburn (1982:436) points to individual lethal retaliation as a powerful leveling mechanism among the Hadza and one that carries little risk since it can be accomplished by stealth. In certain parts of Arnhem Land, Australian Aborigines traditionally eliminated aggressive men who tried to dominate them (Berndt and Berndt 1964:289), and Spencer and Gillen (1976:263) recount that the Iliaura got rid of a man who was "very quarrelsome and strong in magic" by handing him over to an Arunta vengeance party. In South America after contact, a Yaruro "chief" was killed for making his own deals with outsiders (Leeds 1962: 599). A !Kung community may execute "extremely aggressive men" (Lee 1982:47). The !Kung also execute incorrigible offenders (Draper 1978:40), much as the Eskimo collectively kill recidivist murderers and others (see Hoebel 1964:88-92). In New Guinea, according to Knauft (1987:475-76), Gebusi assassination of "sorcerers" (people viewed as being unusually aggressive) parallels this !Kung behavior; however, because Knauft believes that the Gebusi are not singling out unusually aggressive people on a conscious basis, their executions would have to be counted under "witchcraft." For this reason, the Gebusi case and others like it have been set aside.~~' Of course, in classical feuding societies killing an extremely aggressive person becomes problematic with clan retaliation, but a man's own clan can put him to death with no further killing.
...
Of the 48 societies reporting intentional behavior to control negatively evaluated tendencies of leaders (table I), 12 come from North America, II from Central and South America, 9 from Africa, 2 from the Mediterranean/Mideast, 5 from Asia, 2 from Oceania, 4 from New Guinea, and 3 from Australia. The main subsistence types represented are nomads who primarily gather, primarily or exclusively hunt, or primarily herd livestock and sedentary tribesmen who garden or raise livestock. While at least half of these societies can be roughly classified as "bands" or "tribes" having low-key leadership, a good number are clear-cut "big-man" societies or might be classified as "chiefdoms." A striking feature of these reports is that assassination is reported in I I societies out of the 48. "Capital punishment" (see Otterbein 1986, 1987) seems to be rather strongly associated not only with a "simple forager" subtype of band-level society (Knauft 1987, 1991; see also Woodburn 1979; Spencer and Gillen 1976; Berndt and Berndt 1964; Draper 1978; Hoebel 1969) but also with sedentary New Guinea horticulturalists who feud and other warrior tribesmen (see Moore 1972). In all, behaviors that terminated relations with an overly assertive individual or removed him from a leadership role involved 38 of the 48 societies, while in an additional 28 instances the person was manipulated by social pressure. (In many cases a single society exhibited both types of behavior.) Of some 47 behaviors mentioned as motivating negative sanctioning, being too aggressive (13) and dominating others as leader (14) predominated, along with ineffectiveness, partiality, or unresponsiveness in a leadership role (IO). Lack of generosity or monopolizing resources (5), moral transgressions (3), and meanness (2) complete the list. The great majority of these misbehaviors involve dominance or self-assertion. These instances of sanctioning reflect the values by which egalitarian people operate politically. Witchcraft accusations were classified as automatic leveling mechanisms, but one might argue that sometimes the leveling accomplished by such accusations is intentional. Because such accusations tend to be couched in supernatural terms, I was unable to sort this out and set this question aside for future investigation. Another mechanism that may well be intentional in its origin and, possibly, its maintenance is multiple leadership. Many groups have both war and peace chiefs. War chiefs are expected to command, and it would make sense, in groups that jealously guard their egalitarian political traditions, to take away their leadership roles when they return from the battlefield. Again, I could find no very definite indications of intentionality, so I set aside this issue as well."
(https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/boehm.pdf)