Politogenesis

Description

Leonid Grinin:

"During the very prolonged late archaic and early civilization periods ... there was outlined the separation of political sphere from society including the beginning of specialization in the field of political management which in fact can be considered as the origin of politogenesis. However, the process of such separation was long-lasting and incomplete; it was finished only during the period of more or less formed statehood. Thus, the politogenesis is much older than the statehood.

We define politogenesis as a process of formation of a distinct political aspect within the social system that leads to the emergence of partially and relatively autonomous political subsystem, a process of the formation of special power forms of societal organization; this is connected with the concentration of power and political activities (both internal and external) under the control of certain groups and strata. Nevertheless, it should not be supposed that politics emerges only with politogenesis.

Politics is much older. Politics as a realm of rela- tions concerning the distribution of power (Smelser 1988) seems to have appeared around the age of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. Actually, certain elements of ‘quasi-political’ relationships may be already found among the non-human primates (see, e.g., Dol'nik 2007 on complex and dynamic hierarchical relationships among the baboons; see also, e.g., Butovskaya, Korotayev, and Kazankov 2000). However, among nomadic hunter-gatherers the power systems remained mostly very little differentiated and weakly integrated; on the other hand, the level of their differentiation and integration more or less correlated with their demographic indicators."

(http://www.sociostudies.org/books/files/macrohistory_and_globalization/083-135.pdf)

Source: Macrohistory and Globalization. Chapter 3: The Evolution of Statehood

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