Society: primitive and civil, chiefdom and state

It will be objected at this point that I have simply shifted the meaning of the term `evolution' and have thereby, through sleight of hand, avoided the real issues involved in the debates surrounding social evolutionism. Not so. I have simply argued that we should not allow the pervasive and mistaken conflation of the word 'evolution' with Darwinism (cf. [Dunnell 1996]) to prejudice us against the use of the term. This is not to say that earlier theories of social evolution have been unproblematic. Quite the contrary, in fact.

As Kuper has eloquently chronicled, and as was touched upon earlier, the origins of social evolutionism coincided with the invention of a particular way of classifying human social systems ([Kuper 1988]). Thus, all peoples of the world, and of the distant past, were arrayed on either side of a great divide, the great watershed of world history. Primitive Society was constituted as the antithesis of Civil Society, and the two forms were opposed to one another point for point. In the process, notions of both `the primitive' and `the civilized' were transformed, and each came to be constituted as an object of scholarly inquiry. Thus sociology and economics, prominently, devoted themselves to the study of Civil Society, while anthropology took Primitive Society as its special domain.

This primal dichotomy has subsequently undergone a complicated series of transformations, reformulations and ramifications, generating endless specialized vocabularies. The ease with which these subsequent terms may be related in a logical diagram is a testament to their common origin. Thus:

 

Primitive : Civil :: blood : soil :: 


kin society : class society :: 


egalitarian society : stratified society ::   Fried


societas : civitas :: 		 Morgan 


Gemeinschaft : Gesselschaft :: 		 Tönnies 


mechanical solidarity : organic solidarity :: 		Durkheim 


folk : urban :: 		 Redfield 


sacred : secular :: 		 Becker 


affectual : contractual 		 Weber 

While each of these oppositions is in some sense unique, since each has a somewhat different emphasis (see [Loomis 1957] for a discussion of some of these schemes in sociology; see also [Netting 1990]: 22), all refer ultimately to the primary distinction of Primitive : Civil. This is the founding myth of the social sciences.

An excursion into the checkered history of the chiefdom concept illustrates the way in which this primary dichotomy has structured and in significant ways guided the subsequent course of social thought. The term chiefdom, in its modern sense, was introduced by Oberg ([Oberg 1955]). Initially the term was invented for taxonomic purposes and employed to describe the distinctive sociopolitical organization of some protohistoric circum-Caribbean groups. It was used in this way also by Steward in a survey of South American ethnology ([Steward and Faron 1959]). Neither Oberg nor Steward used the term to denote an intermediate stage in the band-state continuum, employing for this purpose the word `Formative.' In fact, Steward and Faron explicitly state that ``...the chiefdoms do not represent a developmental stage in any large scheme of South American culture history. They do not necessarily exemplify an early phase of cultural development in the Central Andes or a potential development of the tropical forest farmers or the food hunters and gatherers" ([Steward and Faron 1959]: 178). `Chiefdom' in this formulation was a strictly taxonomic term, with no evolutionary significance.

The ease and rapidity with which `the chiefdom' was assimilated as a stage in universal evolution is symptomatic of the tendency, in social evolutionary thought, for taxonomy to be transformed into phylogeny, for time and space to be conflated. This critical though entirely predictable step was taken by Service ([Service 1962]). The need for an intermediate stage between Primitive and Civil society resulted from a characteristic notion of gradualism on the part of Service. In this he followed most of the nineteenth-century evolutionists and, of course, more directly, White and Childe. But the problem of origins derived, at its root, from the fact that Primitive and Civil society are each the logical antitheses of the other. The fundamental contradiction in imagining an `evolution' from Primitive to Civil Society is that Primitive and Civil are essences; they are (cosmo)logically discontinuous categories, and, as Mayr has noted, ``an essence cannot evolve'' ([Mayr 1985]: 758).

The postulation of intermediate stages, such as the chiefdom, ``rank society'' ([Fried 1967]), what have you, might seem at first blush to provide a way out of this difficulty.

Many important theories and debates connected with the origin of the repressive state have been handicapped because it is so difficult to account convincingly for its appearance out of the matrix of egalitarian society. But modern ethnohistorical records argue powerfully for the presence around the world of varyingly developed chiefdoms, intermediate forms that seem clearly to have gradually grown out of egalitarian societies and to have preceded the founding of all of the best-known primitive states. ([Service 1975]: 15-16)

In fact, however, the postulation of intermediate forms simply provokes a recursive iteration of the original opposition. This situation can be represented as follows:

Primitive : Civil ::

band/tribe : chiefdom ::

chiefdom : state

The chiefdom thus occupies a logically ambiguous status in general evolution. It is at once Primitive and Civil, and at the same time is neither. This logical ambiguity, inherent in the idea of an intermediate stage in general evolution, clearly accounts for the extensive controversies surrounding the chiefdom in the archaeological literature. The concept, by its very nature, is endlessly malleable and endlessly problematic.

In fact, some subsequent attempts to clarify the idea of the chiefdom have pursued precisely the strategy of Service and have proposed various stages within the transitional stage itself! Steponaitis and Milisauskas for example, suggest a distinction between simple and complex chiefdoms ([Milisauskas 1978,Steponaitas 1978,Steponaitas 1991]). This is obviously a futile exercise, as it simply represents a further structural iteration:

Primitive : Civil ::

band/tribe : simple chiefdom ::

simple chiefdom : complex chiefdom ::

complex chiefdom : state

The same can be said of Carneiro's minimal, typical and maximal chiefdoms ([Carneiro 1981]: 47), though the resulting diagram would be somewhat longer. In fact, a general evolutionary continuum, as is evoked by White, Service and many subsequent authors, is nothing more than the infinite recursion of the original structure. Civil and Primitive Society.

In a very real sense, then, the idea of the chiefdom as a general evolutionary stage is inherently paradoxical, and the extensive controversy revolving about the concept clearly derives much of its vigor from this fact. The history of the chiefdom, from the 1960's to the present day, may from this perspective be seen simply as bricolage, an exploration of the semantic space defined by the Primitive-Civil dichotomy.

Any evolutionary scheme which incorporates the Primitive-Civil dichotomy will produce a `world growth story.' Shennan, recognizing this, concludes that ``social evolutionary approaches are inherently ideological'' ([Shennan 1993]: 53). However to say that social evolution is ideological is to say very little indeed. As Kuper has shown, one of the strengths of the idea of Primitive Society is that it ``yielded an endless succession of transformations which could accommodate any special interest'' ([Kuper 1988]: 239). For Henry Maine, Primitive Society was a means to refute Utilitarian claims of the corruption of the English state. For Morgan, it served to demonstrate the moral order of history, the unfolding of the `Supreme Intelligence.' And, of course, for Marx and Engels Primitive Society, in the guise of primitive communism, stood as the first term in their dialectic of history, promising the future advent of socialism and an end to class domination.

It must be noted, also, that recent attempts to correct the excesses and distortions of social evolutionary theory have often failed to escape entirely from the limits imposed by the Primitive-Civil dichotomy. Michael Mann, for example, has provided many useful suggestions as to how we might conceptualize power and social change. However, his generalizations, as he presents them, are restricted to societies on the late side of the Primitive-Civil divide. Thus, ``[n]one of the ... evolutionary theories bridges the gap...[b]etween rank and stratified societies... All the theories are wrong because they presuppose a general social evolution that had, in fact, stopped. Local history now took over'' ([Mann 1986]: 62). Primitive Society, then, precedes history itself. The phrase 'people without history' takes on new and sinister dimensions in this light.

Giddens's brief history of the world claims that prior to the genesis of the `class-divided civilizations' ``there is little discernible progression with respect of either social or technological change: a `stable state' would be a more accurate description'' ([Giddens 1984]: 238-9). For Giddens, history begins with the state, as for Mann. Many students of forager societies would no doubt take issue with these interpretations, and Mann and Giddens no doubt speak from a position of relative ignorance in this regard. But what is important for us to note is that these critics of `social evolutionism' reproduce the Primitive-Civil dichotomy even as they attempt to dismantle its theoretical superstructure.

Any `world-growth story,' at least as produced by the social sciences to date, is inevitably ethnocentric, as the 'West' invariably is placed at the summit of the `evolutionary stepladder' ([Yoffee 1993]). This alone is reason enough to abandon Primitive Society. It is important also to realize, however, that Primitive Society has no empirical existence. Recent scholarship pertaining to so-called 'egalitarian societies' (this term also is a legacy of the Primitive-Civil dichotomy) has begun the task of dismantling the notion (cf. [Flanagan 1989,Spielman 1986]), but much work remains to be done. For, as Kuper puts it, ``The theory of primitive society is about something that does not and never has existed... [it] is our phlogiston, our aether ...'' ([Kuper 1988]: 8). He concludes: ``Anthropologists developed the theory of primitive society, but we may make amends if we render it obsolete at last, in all its protean forms'' ([Kuper 1988]: 243).

I am no devotee of penitential scholarship. Nevertheless, Kuper's point is taken. The Primitive-Civil dichotomy is one of the deep structures of social scientific thought, and one of its principal points of articulation with the public and with other scientific discourses. If we wish to approach more nearly a scientific account of human history and culture, we must attempt to do away with this most fundamental of mythologizing oppositions.