TPO22 L1 城邦/国家雏形 演化理论-Wiki

TPO22 第一篇讲座

主题:State Formation -人类学

考点:定义 / 并列 / 转折 / 强调 / 态度 / 举例

词汇识记重点:
complexity / surge / strain/ domesticate
approach / critical / spectrum / forage /resolve intensified
nomadic / sophisticated/ intensify distribute / legal code
setting /maintain /enforced  hierarchy / comprise / fertile / valid /hypothesize 

拓展阅读:“State Formation Theories”

路Sir在维基上扒了这篇讲解早期城邦形成的研究理论。有关“城邦/国家的建立”的这个话题一直是社会科学领域诸多学科的热门研究范畴,它会牵扯到人类学,社会学,经济学和政治科学。

下文除去听力讲座中提到的“人口因素”,同时还将涉及诸如,“自发理论”(水利假说/自动假说/自发假说)“冲突理论”,“经济阶层理论”,“征服理论”,“卡内罗限制理论” 以及 “新进化理论”。

文末给到了本帖的完整链接,感兴趣的朋友碰碰运气吧,因为我不知道你能否翻过城邦的围墙。


State formation is the process of the development of a centralized government structure in a situation where one did not exist prior to its development. State formation has been a study of many disciplines of the social sciences for a number of years, so much so that Jonathan Haas writes that "One of the favorite pastimes of social scientists over the course of the past century has been to theorize about the evolution of the world's great civilizations." The study of state formation is divided generally into either the study of early states (those that developed in stateless societies) or the study of modern states (particularly of the form that developed in Europe in the 17th century and spread around the world). Academic debate about various theories is a prominent feature in fields like Anthropology, Sociology, Economics and Political Science.State formation can include state-building, statecraft and nation-building.

Early State Formation

States are minimally defined by anthropologist David S. Sandeford as socially stratified and bureaucratically governed societies with at least four levels of settlement hierarchy (e.g., a large capital, cities, villages, and hamlets). Primary states are those state societies that developed in regions where no states existed before. These states developed by strictly internal processes and interaction with other non-states societies. The exact number of cases which qualify as primary states is not clearly known because of limited information about political organization before the development of writing in many places,but Sandeford lists ten likely cases of primary state formation in Eurasia, the Americas, and the Pacific.

Studies on the formation of early states tend to focus on processes that create and institutionalize a state in a situation where a state did not exist before. Examples of early states which developed in interaction with other states include the Aegean Bronze Age Greek civilizations and the Malagasy civilization in Madagascar. Unlike primary state formation, early state formation does not require the creation of the first state in that cultural context or development autonomously, independently from state development nearby. Early state formation causation can thus include borrowing, imposition, and other forms of interaction with already existing states.

Theories about early state development

There are a number of different theories and hypotheses regarding early state formation that seek generalizations to explain why the state developed in some places but not others. Other scholars believe that generalizations are unhelpful and that each case of early state formation should be treated on its own.

Voluntary Theories

Voluntary theories contend that diverse groups of people came together to form states as a result of some shared rational interest. The theories largely focus on the development of agriculture, and the population and organizational pressure that followed and resulted in state formation. The argument is that such pressures result in integrative pressure for rational people to unify and create a state. Much of the social contract philosophical tradition proposed a voluntary theory for state formation.

One of the most prominent theories of early and primary state formation is the hydraulic hypothesis, which contends that the state was a result of the need to build and maintain large-scale irrigation projects. The theory was most significantly detailed Karl August Wittfogel's argument that, in arid environments, farmers would be confronted by the production limits of small-scale irrigation. Eventually different agricultural producers would join together in response to population pressure and the arid environment, to create a state apparatus that could build and maintain large irrigation projects.

In addition to this, is what Carneiro calls the automatic hypothesis, which contends that the development of agriculture easily produces conditions necessary for the development of a state. With surplus food stocks created by agricultural development, creation of distinct worker classes and a division of labor would automatically trigger creation of the state form.

A third voluntary hypothesis, particularly common with some explanations of early state development, is that long distance trade networks created an impetus for states to develop at key locations: such as ports or oases. For example, the increased trade in the 16th century may have been a key to state formation in West African states such as Whydah,Dahomey, and the Benin Empire.

Conflict theories

Conflict theories of state formation regard conflict and dominance of some population over another population as key to the formation of states. In contrast with voluntary theories, these arguments believe that people do not voluntarily agree to create a state to maximize benefits, but that states form due to some form of oppression by one group over others. A number of different theories rely on conflict, dominance, or oppression as a causal process or as a necessary mechanism within certain conditions and they may borrow from other approaches. In general the theories highlight:economic stratification,conquest of other peoples, conflict in circumscribed areas, and the neo-evolutionary growth of bureaucracy.

Economic stratification

Friedrich Engels articulated one of the earliest theories of the state based on anthropological evidence in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State(1884). The theory of Engels developed from study of Ancient Society(1877) byLewis H. Morgan and from the sketches of this work by Karl Marx on the Asiatic mode of production. Engels argues that the state developed as a result of the need to protect private property. The theory contended that surplus production as a result of the development of agriculture created a division and specialization of labor: leading to classes who worked the land and to those who could devote time to other tasks. Class antagonism and the need to secure the private property of those living on the surplus production produced by agriculturalists resulted in the creation of the state. The anthropologistMorton Fried(1923-1986) further developed this approach, positing social stratification as the primary dynamic underlying the development of the state.

Conquest theories

Similar to the economic stratification theories, the conquest theory contends that a single city establishes a state in order to control other tribes or settlements it has conquered. The theory has its roots in the work of Ibn Khaldun(1332-1406) and of Jean Bodin(1530–1596), but it was first organized around anthropological evidence by Franz Oppenheimer(1864-1943).Oppenheimer argues that the state was created to cement inequality between peoples that resulted from conquest.

Carneiro's circumscription theory

Robert Carneiro developed a theory (1970) aiming to provide a more nuanced understanding of state formation by accounting for the fact that many factors (surplus agriculture, warfare, irrigation, conquest, etc.) did not produce states in all situations. He concluded that while population pressure and warfare were mechanisms of state formation, they only created states in geographic regions circumscribed, or walled off from the surrounding area. Geographic barriers (or in some cases barriers created by nomadic raiders or by rival societies) create limitations on the ability of the people to deal with production shortfalls, and the result is that warfare results in state creation.In situations of unlimited agricultural land (like the Amazon or the Eastern United States), Carneiro believes that the pressures did not exist and so warfare allowed people to move elsewhere and thus did not spur creation of a state.

Neoevolutionary theories

Further information:Neoevolutionism

A number of different theories, sometimes connected with some of the processes above, explain state formation in terms of the evolution of leadership systems. This argument sees human society as evolving from tribes or chiefdoms into states through a gradual process of transformation that lets a small group hierarchically structure society and maintain order through appropriation of symbols of power. Groups that gained power in tribal society gradually worked towards building the hierarchy and segmentation that created the state.

Elman Service (1915-1996) proposed that, unlike in economic stratification theories, the state largely creates stratification in society rather than being created to defend that stratification. Bureaucracy evolves to support the leadership structure in tribes and uses religious hierarchy and economic stratification as a means to further increase its power. Warfare may play a key role in the situation, because it allows leaders to distribute benefits in ways that serve their interests, however it is a constant that feeds the system rather than an autonomous factor. Similarly, anthropologist Henry T. Wright argues (2006) that competitive and conflictual environments produce political experimentation leading to the development of the state. As opposed to theories that the state develops through chance or tinkering, experimentation involves a more directed process where tribal leaders learn from organization forms of the past and from the outcomes they produced.

Other theories

Other aspects are highlighted in different theories as of contributing importance. It is sometimes claimed that technological development, religious development, or socialization of members are crucial to state development. However, most of these factors are found to be secondary in anthropological analysis. In addition to conquest, some theories contend that the need for defense from military conquest or the military organization to conquer other peoples is the key aspect leading to state formation.

Discredited theories

Some theories proposed in the 19th century and early 20th century have since been largely discredited by anthropologists. Carneiro writes that theories "with a racial basis, for example, are now so thoroughly discredited that they need not be dealt with...We can also reject the belief that the state is an expression of the 'genius' of a people, or that it arose through a 'historical accident.' Such notions make the state appear to be something metaphysical or adventitious, and thus place it beyond scientific understanding." Similarly,social Darwinist perspectives like those of Walter Bagehot in Physics and Politics argued that the state form developed as a result of the best leaders and organized societies gradually gaining power until a state resulted. Such explanations are not considered sufficient to explain the formation of the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_formation

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