Early State and Its Alternatives

* Book: The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues. Ed. by Leonid E. Grinin, Robert L. Carneiro et al. 'Uchitel' Publishing House, 2004

URL = https://www.socionauki.ru/book/early_state_en/

Description

"Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue to remain among those problems which have not found generally accepted solutions yet. New research shows more and more clearly that pathways to statehood and early state types were numerous. On the other hand, research has detected such directions of sociocultural evolution, which do not lead to state formation at all, whereas within certain evolutionary patterns transition to statehood takes place on levels of complexity far exceeding the ones indicated by conventional evolutionist schemes. Contributors to The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues represent both traditional and non-traditional points of view on evolution of statehood. However, the data presented in the volume seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diversity of pathways to statehood, as well as non-universality of transformation into states of complex and even supercomplex societies."

Contents

From the editorial introduction:

"Contributors to this volume represent both traditional and non-traditional points of view on evolution of statehood. However, the data presented by the contributors seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diversity of pathways to statehood, as well as the absence of unavoidable necessity of transformation into states for complex and even supercomplex societies.

Henri J. M. Claessen presents his article ‘Was the State Inevitable?’.

He provides the following answer to this question:

- "Only when a number of specified conditions are present at the same time in the same society, and when some triggering accident occurs, the development of an early state will take place, provided that a positive feedback between the ‘necessary conditions’ occurs. It is in such cases only that the emergence of an early state was inevitable."

This is a very considerate approach. However, there were a lot of societies where the above-mentioned combination of conditions never came about and ‘some triggering accident’ never occurred. Yet, those sociopolitical systems continued to develop. How could we classify respective polities? Such complex stateless systems often coped with problems comparable with ones encountered by states, they are quite comparable with early states by the range of their functions and level of their structural complexity as well as causes and prerequisites for their formation. So it is incorrect to consider them as pre-state structures. What were those political systems, which developed beyond the pre-state level and competed successfully with states?

A few contributions to the volume (Bondarenko, Grinin, Korotayev, Kradin) try to find answer to this question. These authors consider the above-mentioned political systems as state alternatives and analogues. They arrive at the conclusion that processes of archaic societies' political evolution should not be reduced to the rise of the state exclusively because this is rather a specific version of those processes.

In particular, Grinin, in his first contribution to this volume, maintains that

- "we know of numerous polities, which are comparable to early states in size, complexity and a number of other parameters, and, at the same time, are significantly superior to typical pre-state formations – such as simple chiefdoms, tribes, independent simple communities. For these reasons, it would be wrong to regard such complex non-state societies as being at the pre-state level of development. The most productive path to follow is to recognize them just as early state analogues."

Claessen argues that ‘from its very beginning was the state a stronger type of organization than all others; for the surrounding polities there were not many alternatives’.

Indeed, most alternative sociopolitical structures were ultimately destroyed and absorbed by states, or transformed into states. However, it is not evident that the state was the dominant type of political organization from the very beginning in general as well as in every particular case of state and non-state polities' interaction. In many regions of the world for long periods of time alternative and analogous polities were neither less complex nor less successful than states. Thus, the long-run evolutionary superiority of the state did not become obvious from the very beginning and though today the state can be regarded as an almost inevitable result of global socio-political evolution, this was not evident for a great part of human history. It is not reasonable to ignore the fact that states and their alternatives and analogues co-existed for millennia. So the diversity of sociopolitical forms, non-unilinearity of social evolution, presence of alternatives to the state can be regarded as general ideas going through most contributions to this volume.

Alternatives of social evolution cannot be only reduced to the alternativity of state formation process. We are dealing here with a general feature of evolutionary processes, which is considered in the contribution by Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev, who maintain the following:

- What is important for us here is that there are reasons to suppose that an equal level of sociopolitical (and cultural) complexity (which makes it possible to solve equally difficult problems faced by societies) can be achieved not only in various forms but on essentially different evolutionary pathways, too. Thus, it is possible to achieve the same level of system complexity through differing pathways of evolution which appeared simultaneously to the formation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and increased in quantity alongside socio-cultural advancement. Diversity could be regarded as one of the most important preconditions of the evolutionary process. This implies that the transition to any qualitatively new forms is normally not possible without a sufficient level of variability of sociocultural forms.

Another leading theme of the volume is complexity of the state formation process. For example, the article by Korotayev considers a case of transformation of state systems into chiefdoms. On the other hand, it turns out to be rather difficult to classify many political systems and as a result, sometimes different contributors to this volume classify the same polities in opposite ways. Thus, Berent considers the Athenian polis as a stateless community, whereas Grinin in his second contribution regards the same polity аs an early state of a specific type essentially different from other (especially bureaucratic) types. Political systems which Khazanov considers to be early states (e.g., the Hsiung-nu polity), are regarded by Kradin as ‘supercomplex chiefdoms’.

Carneiro and Berezkin examine cultures, which can be classified as unequivocally pre-state; however, Berezkin shows that alternatives of social evolution are attested among such cultures too. Complexity of social evolution is also emphasized in the contribution by Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník which starts with the following statement: ‘Even in the face of a revolution in telecommunications and a powerful process of economic globalization, it has become evident that there has been no linear progression in political development or centralization’. This article analyzes the present- day сhiefdom-like political formations in Africa, the Arab world, in Afghanistan, in some parts of India, Burma and Thailand, in Oceania as well as some other parts of the world. Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník study how the concept of chiefdom correlates with the present day сhiefdom-like political entities."

ToC

Part I: Theory

Introduction via [1]

1. Alternatives of Social Evolution Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Leonid E. Grinin, and Andrey V. Korotayev

2. Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? Robert L. Carneiro

3. Beyond States and Empires: Chiefdoms and Informal Politics Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman, and Peter Skalník

4. Alternative Models of Middle Range Society. ‘Individualistic’ Asia vs. ‘Collectivistic’ America? Yuri E. Berezkin

5. Was the State Inevitable? Henri J. M. Claessen

6. The Early State and Its Analogues: A Comparative Analysis ) Leonid E. Grinin

Part II: Early States

7. Early Dynastic Egypt: A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological Hypothesis of ‘Unification’ Dmitri B. Proussakov

8. The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer Vladimir V. Emelianov

9. Ritual and Rationality: Religious Roots of the Bureaucratic State in Ancient China Richard Baum

10. Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance, and the Rise of the Zapotec Early State Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

11. The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State in America Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson

12. The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe Ludomir R. Lozny

13. Formation and Development of States in the Congo Basin Eleonora S. L'vova

Part III: Sedentary Alternatives and Analogues

14. The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe? (Some Trends of Political Evolution in North-East Yemeni Highlands) ; Andrey V. Korotayev

15. From Local Communities to Megacommunity: Biniland in the 1st Millennium B.C. – 19th Century A.D. Dmitri M. Bondarenko

16. Greece: The Stateless Polis (11th– 4th Сenturies B.C.) Moshe Berent

17. Rome: Socio-political Evolution in the 8th– 2nd Centuries B.C. Dmitri V. Dozhdev

18. Early State and Democraсy Leonid E. Grinin

Part IV. Nomadic Alternatives and Analogues

19. Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military Advantage of Traditional Pastoralists (download) William Irons

20. Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in Historical Retrospective Anatoly M. Khazanov

21. Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective Nikolay N. Kradin

22. Mongolian Nomadic Society of the Empire Period Tatyana D. Skrynnikova