Volume 25, Issue 1 - Thomas Götzelt (ed.) Reverence and Deference: Kinship and Patronage in Early Societies

This preliminary overview aims primarily to make plausible that kinship is an attribution, that is, that it is tied to observations as uses of distinctions. However, observation is contingent, not arbitrary, and it both requires and generates ontologies on a case-by-case basis. The claim that kinship is resolvable into ‘relatedness’ runs into this very impasse of the notion of indifferent arbitrariness. For if kinship were indeed merely a synonym for relatedness, i. e., for inclusions, the question would arise as to what is excluded and what is not excluded concerning which arrangement. However, if one follows the suggestion made here that kinship is a medium of communication in which forms, i. e., distinctions, can be inscribed, one can turn to the classical functionalist question of how these forms have been deployed culturally and across social-evolutionary ruptures, and perhaps functionally equivalently. If it is the case that kinship is based on distinctions, the question of their respective social environments also becomes interesting for the observers of these observations. Therefore, the sketch also refers to attributions and contextures as conditions of the possibility of distinctions in this case. Thus, patronage can be brought into play as a phenomenon in the environment of kinship. As a hypothesis, it is formulated that patronage parasitically participates in the genealogical and functional forms of differentiation of pre-modern and modern societies, respectively.

Ancient Egypt provides abundant evidence about family strategies used by the elite to assert their authority, enhance their power in competitive settings such as the royal court and to preserve their resources (economic, symbolic) in face of rivals and newcomers. However, when some individuals obtained particular benefits from their service to the state (land, rewards, high quality goods, prebends), they tried to preserve these gains within their nuclear family and to avoid any claim or interference from other members of their kin. Tensions rapidly erupted so kings made a selective use of rewards and honors to break the solidarity of potentially dangerous noble families, to induce rivalries between them and to keep his central role as mediator between factions and source of legitimate authority. Temples were ideal arenas in which such tensions and strategies manifested themselves, bringing thus the opportunity to analyze the actual construction of power in ancient Egypt beyond ideological expressions and rhetorical claims.

Overviews of social development in early southern Mesopotamia of the third to first millennium BCE, which prominently address the question of state formation, assume a trend toward ever-decreasing functionality of kinship attribution. The article attempts to justify in broad outlines, but by connecting one or the other finding, that this cannot be proven empirically and is theoretically implausible, considering that familiarity as a criterion of kinship was necessary to establish relationships of trust. This trust was the condition for the possibility of patronage and the imposition of power. The article investigates both by trying to find suitable social contexts in the early societies of this region by starting with cosmological designs. As actors of these mutual observations in the medium of power, the argumentation establishes the community and the Big Man, whose outsider position (but communal affiliation) it describes as parasitism. In terms of difference theory, the usual tendency to overlook the constitutive oscillation between communal participation and familial representation in these social systems by presupposing a concept of unity, such as a state, are thus shown to be misguided.

Ideals about clan ( zu 族) have been an essential ingredient in Chinese conceptions of social order since antiquity. It was grounded on a feudal familybased model. However, the change from an ancient feudal to a bureaucratic system implied major changes. In this article I provide a historical overview with a focus on the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126 AD), showing that strong ideas of familialism or clanism were in fact never skipped in pre-modern China but inherited and continuously propagated by Confucianism – including such well-known elements as common ancestor worship. Rather complementing than replacing this family-based model, the later introduction of the civil service system on the political level led to a new clientelism. Furthermore, Confucianism as the hegemonic ideology of imperial China not only extended family-based ideas to a new universalism but also strongly propagated ideas of a common good and impartiality as a corrective to career and family-oriented egoism. In summary, I argue that as a result of a long process of negotiations, Chinese familialism (clanism) as an ideal of basic social structure, the ideal of impartiality and concern for the common good ( gong 公) as well as clientelism in the bureaucratic system have coexisted in imperial China for a long time and have produced a particular (path-dependent) blend (and ‘division of labor’) of socio-cultural patterns.

This paper starts from the fundamental assumption that many political structures in Sub Sahara Africa are characterized by both networks and hierarchies that are shaping interactions and relationships in a manifold of ways. Based on ethnographic evidence from Kpandai district in Ghana, this paper provides answers to questions of complementarity and competition. The plural legal system that exists at the micro levels enables female customary leadership that builds on hierarchical grounds to maintain horizontal relationships. Thus, while maintaining vertical structures through hierarchies, Nawuri women leaders act via networks as interconnected nodes and maintain their independence as social agents for the benefit of their communities. Their roles are complementing male leadership and ensure the flow of authority, establish power, and provide a sense of security in supporting local governance and human security at the grassroots level. In all fields mentioned, female leaders are relying on the horizontal flow of command, consensus and control to maintain their status and remain relevant at the micro levels. This paper concludes by noting that the female customary leaders will continue to use networks to provide basic services in the district. This will not only guarantee efficiency of political initiatives but also harness and sustainable use of local resources.

Pakistan’s political volatility is well known and oft cited as a cause for concern both regionally and internationally. The state is accused of adopting duplicitous tactics and fostering violent paramilitary organizations in its efforts to undermine Indian hegemony and internal opposition. From the outside, the persistent functioning of the state can sometimes appear to be a mystery. Managing chronic conflicting adversarial relations over a sustained period of time demands particular social and political tools that must be resilient while ensuring robust reproduction of particular types of shared interests. Such social and political tools are diverse and operate to generate both stability and instability in state political institutions. The political networks of individuals and groups that actively seek to control and manipulate state institutions are formed through different types of relationship, but one of the most publicly visible is marriage. Marriage networks offer opportunities for indirect alliances through children, siblings and other kin members in ways that need not threaten ideologically rooted affiliations, such as those created through shared political party membership. In this working paper, we focus on the communicative potential of such marriage networks through comparing village networks of landowners and the families who engage actively in electoral politics in Punjab, Pakistan. Although these findings are based on more than two decades of research carried out in rural and urban Pakistan, they remain partial, because Pakistani politics is anything but tidy or simply. Nevertheless, any attempt to analyze Pakistani politics that neglects the impact of the complex personal relationship networks is unlikely to satisfactorily explain or even describe the current political situation of the country.

The paper discusses the state as a one-off invention in human societies replacing threats of violence by threats of force. The paper sketches a cognitive studies approach to the analysis of social institutions by drawing attention to the necessary differentiation and integration of multiple systems references of organisms, minds, societies, and technologies as a minimal set of variables describing the micro-diversity of social behavior, action, and experience any institution will have to respond to. Both kinds of threats are considered to control such a micro-diversity within a certain ‘form’ the state assumes to exert power and legitimate it. The paper does not go into historical, archaeological, or ethnological detail, but restricts itself to presenting the form of the state as a heuristic possibly useful in historical, archaeological, or ethnological research.