Sublime

Documentary interchangeability, which reinforced human interchangeability, was fostered by the development of a standardized language-of-state.

Modern politicians play the role of wheelers and dealers, brokering alliances or negotiating compromises between different constituencies or interest groups. In Nambikwara society this didn’t happen much because there weren’t really many differences in wealth or status. However, chiefs did play an analogous role, brokering between two entirely diff

Of course, gifting a daughter or sister not only signaled the conquering ruler’s superiority, it also had the advantage of turning the conquered into long-term clients, at least as long as the marriage lasted. Trying to avoid client status, four of the societies (Egypt, Hawai’i, Aztec, and Inca) eventually opted for royal incest.

For the new functionary, however, things are more complex. Talent, not death, charts his course. He sees before him a summit rather than a centre.

Here, Rousseau asks exactly the same question that puzzled so many indigenous Americans. How is it that Europeans are able to turn wealth into power; turn a mere unequal distribution of material goods – which exists, at least to some degree, in any society – into the ability to tell others what to do, to employ them as servants, workmen or grenadie

An Anthropology of Your Life

Precisely these “civilized” societies are likely to resort to savage violence in their attempts to conquer “primitive” societies.22

This is typical of subsistence societies,