A few years after Lee chronicled his graphic illustrations and astute political interpretations, the argument about egalitarianism was broadened (Boehm 1982b; Woodburn 1982). Woodburn focused on subsistence economics in characterizing as “immediate-return” foragers those who did not engage in significant storage of food and instead shared their large-game meat pervasively. He cited six societies, three of them African, and in considering egalitarianism as a wider phenomenon, he explicitly reemphasized Lee’s point that this kind of political order was intentional: because foragers prized their individual autonomy, they went out of their way to maintain the status quo.
My argument also followed Lee’s insights, but in an evolutionary direction. The premise was that humans are innately disposed to form social dominance hierarchies similar to those of the African great apes, but that prehistoric hunter-gatherers, acting as moral communities, were largely able to neutralize such tendencies—just as extant hunter-gatherers do. The ethnographic basis for that hypothesis was that present-day foragers apply techniques of social control in suppressing both dominant leadership and undue competitiveness. In effect, Woodburn and I were working with similar general hypotheses about intentionality, a line of explanation that I have continued to develop (Boehm 1984a, 1993, 1994b, 1997a, 1997b).
In 1981–82 I was engaged in a major research project at the Tozzer Library of Harvard University surveying hundreds of egalitarian societies of various types. The original stimulus was my fieldwork with the Navajo Indians plus the tantalizing comparative discussions with Jean Briggs about the Utku. Lee’s and then Woodburn’s field reports led me to feel I was on the right track. The research project, funded by the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, was not limited to foragers, however. The hypothesis I had submitted was that egalitarianism is the product of any small nonliterate community’s vigilant insistence on autonomy for its household heads, and this hypothesis was directed at both hunter-gatherers and tribesmen such as the Montenegrin Serbs I had studied from 1963 to 1966.
With respect to egalitarian society and its evolutionary status, a significant subsequent development was Knauft’s (1991) lucid identification of a major puzzle in human evolution. He compared the quite hierarchical nature of extant great apes with hunter-gatherers of the simpler type characterized by Woodburn, suggesting that with respect to political hierarchy human evolution had followed a U-shaped trajectory. The curve began with strong degrees of despotism, as this term was defined ethologically in Chapter 1, then dipped to represent a protracted period of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism. Not too long after the domestication of plants and animals, the curve climbed steeply to encompass not only hierarchical chiefdoms, but eventually civilizations and nations. In effect, Knauft was posing an evolutionary riddle: how could a species apparently lose its innate tendencies to hierarchy for possibly millions of years, then suddenly regain them so forcefully?
The mystery pertained to the egalitarians in the middle, who exhibited a noteworthy absence of hierarchy. In 1993 I published the principal results of my continuing survey of forager and tribal egalitarians. With respect to both the hunter-gatherers and the tribesmen in my sample, the hypothesis was straightforward: such people are guided by a love of personal freedom. For that reason they manage to make egalitarianism happen, and do so in spite of human competitiveness—and in spite of innate human tendencies to dominance and submission that easily lead to the formation of social dominance hierarchies. People can arrest this process by reacting collectively, often preemptively, to curb individuals who show signs of wanting to dominate their fellows. Their reactions involve fear (of domination), angry defiance, and a collective commitment to dominate, which is based on a fear of being individually dominated. As potential subordinates, they are able to express dominance because they find collective security in a large, group-wide political coalition. They choose this option rather than reacting individually to would-be dominators on the basis of fearful, submissive impulses.
This hypothesis provided a curious answer to Knauft’s riddle, for I was arguing that the same quite definite and “hierarchical” human political nature could have been supporting not only despotic societies of recent humans and ancestral apes, but also the egalitarian societies of humans. In despotic social dominance hierarchies the pyramid of power is pointed upward, with one or a few individuals (usually male) at the top exerting authority over a submissive rank and file. In egalitarian hierarchies the pyramid of power is turned upside down, with a politically united rank and file decisively dominating the alpha-male types.
I have mentioned already that Erdal and Whiten (1994) found my use of the term “reverse dominance hierarchy” controversial (see also de Waal 1996:128). My 1993 article also provoked criticism in other areas (for example, Barclay 1993; Kent 1993; Knauft 1993; Dentan 1993). I shall address some of those comments, but first it will be useful to see the results of my survey of foragers and tribesmen. I examined a substantial portion of the world ethnographic literature in search of instances of a rank and file’s attempt to use sanctions to prevent manipulation or outright domination from above. To keep myself honest, I also was watching for instances of small-scale societies being dominated by individuals wielding substantial authority. To state the mission less technically, I was interested in seeing whether all small-scale societies were egalitarian, in seeing whether the egalitarianism I found could be laid at the doorstep of social control, and in seeing how effective such control was in the face of individual tendencies to gain political ascendancy.
Because data on egalitarian behavior are relatively scarce, I did not undertake a typical cross-cultural survey with careful reliance on sampling techniques. Rather, I looked for any source that provided useful information on the above topics. My 1993 paper gives the methodological details, and also a tabulated summary of my findings on mobile foragers and tribesmen. Many of the same data are presented in this chapter and the next, in a more qualitative form, but here the sample has been expanded somewhat.
Introducing the Egalitarian Ethos
A significant goal of the survey was to collect information that helped to describe the egalitarian ethos. An ethos (Kroeber 1948:292–295) is a constellation of values that define what is important to a given people. Cashdan (1980) has aptly applied this notion to foragers, and there do seem to be certain elements that all foraging nomads treasure when it comes to defining ethically how people should behave with one another socially and politically (see also Gardner 1991).
The ethos is of critical importance if one is to understand egalitarian societies as intentional groups. Foragers use social control to keep their societies equalized rather than hierarchical, and they do so quite effectively. But they could not accomplish this feat if they did not have an unambiguous political objective. It is the values inherent in the egalitarian ethos that focus people efficiently in this respect: certain attitudes and behaviors are praised, while others are condemned and punished.
There was a time in the history of anthropology when “values” were not taken very seriously as a theoretical variable. In looking at band-level society as a true pioneer, Steward (1955) relegated values to a causally passive, all-but-derivative category that he termed ideology. However, the egalitarian ethos is far more than a reflection of other more basic environmental and social forces in human life. For the indigenous moral community, it provides a realistic focus for action as people try to regulate social life within the group. Because such attempts tend to be successful, it is proper to call the egalitarian ethos a guidance mechanism—an intentional one. The agenda involves a specific behavioral strategy, and it has an influential and sometimes highly determinative effect on behavior, as intended.
Prominent in this hunter-gatherer behavioral blueprint is an ethic of sharing that selectively extends to the entire group the cooperation and altruism found within the family. It does so rather successfully with respect to meat sharing, and to the sharing of decision-making power at the band level. This principle of sharing power applies to many aspects of band life, for the personal autonomy of the band’s main political actors is of paramount concern—unless their behavior threatens the autonomy of others and thereby becomes deviant. A particularly disvalued form of deviancy arises when one of the main political actors belittles, bullies, or otherwise tries to control another (see Boehm 1993). This overall political orientation could be called antiauthoritarian (Gardner 1991), but it goes further, to the point that the ethos is, in certain contexts, highly anticompetitive. Lee’s wise informant made this point very clear.
Before we examine some specific manifestations of this ethos, I must emphasize that foragers have no need of constitutional conventions in order to define and institutionalize their mode of self-governance. A few surviving foragers, after contact and assimilation, have been taught to utilize this formal mechanism (for instance, Tonkinson 1984; Conn 1985). But the principles underlying a pristine egalitarian order tend to remain rather intuitive—unless an anthropologist asks just the right questions of an articulate subject, as Lee did.
An astute ethnographer listens as people express approval or disapproval of different kinds of behavior, then from these conversations builds a composite picture of the local ethos. Speaking on behalf of the Alaskan Eskimo group he studied, Jenness (1922:93–94) tells us: “Every man in his eyes has the same rights and the same privileges as every other man in the community. One may be a better hunter, or a more skillful dancer, or have greater control over the spiritual world, but this does not make him more than one member of a group in which all are free and theoretically equal.”
Implicit in this description is the primus inter pares political stance discussed by Fried (1967). Foragers are not intent on true and absolute equality, but on a kind of mutual respect that leaves individual autonomy intact. There are various ways of expressing this theme, and they can be fairly indirect. For example, foragers may say that a respected leader should be generous and even-tempered, or they may express the same thing negatively, saying that a respected leader is not stingy or prone to fits of anger. In either case, they mean that he should not use his influential position to exploit others economically or to dominate them personally.
At stake is individual autonomy, and Gardner’s (1991) survey demonstrates that foragers are predictably concerned with their autonomy and work to preserve it. As one example, the traditional Pintupi Aborigines in Australia placed a high value on personal autonomy (Myers 1980:313) and were able to express this position quite eloquently. In my opinion, nomadic foragers are universally—and all but obsessively—concerned with being free from the authority of others. That is the basic thrust of their political ethos, which applies equally to all the main political actors.
An ethos is fascinating because it is not necessarily a statement about an actual state of affairs, but a set of strongly held moralistic positions about how life should be. Hunter-gatherers may speak abstractly about personal freedom, but often they prefer to deal in specifics, as when they detail desirable or undesirable traits in leaders. Their political blueprint is highly practical, and the adverse political forces they face—forces that make for an increase in hierarchy and a decrease in personal autonomy—can become formidable. A potential bully always seems to be waiting in the wings, and people are prepared by their ethos to deal with such a threat summarily. Bullying—outside the family—is highly unethical.
Ethical values stem from a people’s sense of the social problems they habitually face: for example, if murder did not exist there would be no “Thou shalt not kill.” There appears to be a universal short list of values that all cultures share: negative ones that proscribe killing, seriously deceptive lying, or theft within the group, and positive ones that call for altruism and cooperation for the benefit of the whole community (Campbell 1975). However, the political values found in an egalitarian ethos are far from being universal. In some larger societies, like chiefdoms, both hierarchy and strong political authority are readily countenanced by public opinion, and statements implying that “firsts” must also be “equals” are never heard. A handful of sedentary foragers also lack the egalitarian ethos and support a hierarchical order. Yet the primus inter pares approach to political life is widespread. Indeed, this egalitarian approach appears to be universal for foragers who live in small bands that remain nomadic, suggesting considerable antiquity for political egalitarianism.
Leadership as a Special Political Problem
A foraging band may have a formal leader who is referred to as the headman or some such title, or it may have an informal leader who steps forward to help in decision-making as long as the band welcomes him in doing so. Some bands merely have a series of functional leaders who come forward when their particular expertise is needed. In every case, such a person is respected, and the danger exists that he (or she) may try to take advantage of this position and selfishly parlay it into something more. While there are many types of potential upstarts, a leader is likely to be watched quite vigilantly by his egalitarian peers—the other main political actors whose personal autonomies will be at stake if he tries to become bossy or otherwise aggrandize his prerogatives. He may be “first,” but everyone else has to be “equal.”
With respect to Kalahari foragers, Lee provides exceptional and welcome details about !Kung leadership and the actual personalities who fill this role. Leaders are sometimes women but usually men, and they are helped in reaching this position by being the oldest person in a large family, by being the titular owner of local resources or being married to such a person, or by having the right personal qualities—those defined in the ethos. Preferred qualities in leaders often are expressed negatively: an absence of arrogance, overbearingness, boastfulness, and personal aloofness. Lee (1979:345) says: “In !Kung terms these traits absolutely disqualify a person as a leader and may engender even stronger forms of ostracism.” Kent (1993) has commented similarly. At the same time, Lee demonstrates that a wide variety of personality types can become leaders as long as they avoid the negative criteria.
Specifics of the Forager Ethos
Lee emphasized the absence of overaggressive traits, but let me stress that an ethos is composed of both proscriptions, which are aimed at curbing antisocial behaviors, and prescriptions, which promote prosocial behavior. For example, generosity is frequently mentioned as a positive trait, one that is particularly desirable in band leaders, and this emphasis is hardly surprising. Politically egalitarian foragers are also, to a significant degree, materially egalitarian: those who have more are expected to share when scarcity exists. Thus the issue of generosity is salient. In detailing the results of my survey of hunter-gatherer ethoses, I shall italicize items that are concerned specifically with stinginess or generosity.
Among the Coeur d’Alene, wisdom, generosity, and honesty were valued (Teit 1930:152–153). A Mescalero Apache chief was good at talking and thinking, generous, and respectful (Basehart 1970:99), while Godwin says of the Apache that a chief should be capable as a warrior and hunter and successful economically, but also generous, impartial, patient, and in control of his temper (see Basso 1971:14). Denig (1930:449) says of the Assiniboin that parsimony, along with exceptional meanness, was criticized—and in fact the chief tended to be the poorest man in camp. Arapaho leaders were expected to be brave, trustworthy, willing to share food unselfishly, and to have good sense and judgment (Hilger 1952:190). Jenness (1935:2) delineates how an Ojibwa chief would provide for a needy family from his own resources, or arrange contributions from other band members. For the Australian Pintupi, Myers (1980) makes the case that a primary role of chiefs and elders was to take care of other Aborigines. For the Kalahari !Kung, Marshall (1967:38) says that headmanship is not much desired and that the leader has to be generous and careful not to stand out. This last characterization displays the close relation between material and political criteria for successful leadership, as defined in a local ethos.
Impartiality, being careful not to surpass one’s peers, lack of hostile feelings, and emotional self-control were mentioned, so obviously it takes more than nurturant generosity for a person to qualify as a politically nonthreatening headman or chief. Further mentions of emotional self-control occur relative to other foragers (for instance, Flannery 1953; Basso 1971), but as a practical matter one must be capable of leading as well as avoiding the pitfalls of overaggressiveness. Slobodin (1969:66) described the ethos of Kutchin hunters of the American Northeast as follows: “The Kutchin have clearly conceptualized the qualities requisite to leadership in their society. A sine qua non for leadership is above-average competence in economic pursuits. In addition, a proper balance of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ qualities is necessary. ‘Hard’ qualities may be designated as shrewdness, drive, and a touch of ruthlessness; the ‘soft’ qualities are generosity and concern for the common weal as defined in Kutchin culture.”
This description suggests that when foragers are looking for someone to lead them in a particular enterprise—or as a long-term group leader—they may find themselves facing a dilemma. It makes sense to choose their most successful, forceful personality to fulfill this role, precisely because the entire group wishes to be successful like him. On the other hand, it is politically less threatening to select someone who is reasonably wise but not likely to become greedy—or to think about dominating others as his influence grows. In this context, generosity may compensate for assertiveness.
Few accounts of a forager political ethos came close to being ethnographically complete, but a sampling of the better normative descriptions that are available reveals some common threads with respect to leadership. A desirable leader is likely to be of high social standing, generous, wise, experienced, successful in what he does, and self-assertive in general. It also helps if he is fair-minded, tactful, reliable, morally upright, apt at resolving disputes, and a competent speaker (Boehm 1993). One might expect foragers to be enthusiastic about such a person, but their sensitivity to the tendencies of others to grasp at authority is such that some of the stronger qualities that make for effective leadership also create ambivalence.
Egalitarian leaders are widely reported to act with modesty and lack of aggressiveness, traits that reflect the sensitivity of leaders themselves to the ambivalence that is predictable whenever a person moves into a position to build authority. Elkin (1940:251) reports that Arapaho mounted hunters in North America expected their chiefs to be strong with respect to whites but humble at home, whereas the chiefs hated their own unassuming role.
We now have some notion of how the leadership role tends to be delineated in the ethos, but we must keep in mind that the average nomadic band has only half a dozen or so adult hunters or people who are otherwise likely to be chosen as leaders, and that human personalities vary significantly. Real-life choices surely are compromises much of the time, and individuals who neatly fulfill all the local criteria are likely to be scarce. Still, every member of the band is aware of the local ethos; a precise blueprint exists for how to behave if one wishes to be chosen—and uncontroversially retained—as leader.
Thus, the widespread reports of leaders acting in an unassuming way, and of leaders being so generous that they themselves “had nothing,” do not necessarily mean that bands are choosing as leaders unaggressive individuals who just naturally tend to give away all of their resources. In this type of small society, in which the ethos is shared so uniformly, politically sensitive leaders know exactly how to comport themselves if they wish to lead without creating tension. Appropriate ways to assuage the apprehensions of watchful peers are to never give orders, to be generous to a fault, and to remain emotionally tranquil, particularly with respect to anger as a predictable component of dominance. Basically, one needs to avoid any sign of assertive self-aggrandizement.
If otherwise capable individuals are irascible, arrogant, stingy, or meanspirited, and do not manage to control these tendencies, they have little chance of gaining or maintaining the leadership role. Although ethnographic reports focus on leaders, the same negative criteria apply to the other main political actors in the group as well. Every forager is expected to be cooperative, generous, unarrogant, and unbossy. Nonetheless, we shall see that some individuals (including leaders) do fail to restrain themselves.
Antiauthoritarian Sanctions
Social control among foragers is often unobtrusive. Small bands of people, a fair number of whom are closely related, usually manage to get along rather well and basically accept social limits without testing them too often. While bands normally contain families that are unrelated, there tends to be a familial ideology in terms of everyone’s helping everyone else—within limits. Many reports tell of ready cooperation and pleasant social relations. If aroused, however, a band becomes a formidable aggressive force for social control. Morally outraged hunters are capable of taking dire measures against people to whom they are closely bonded—if they feel such people have become seriously deviant.
For a moral nonconformist, living with other people in a band often is quite literally the only way to stay alive. Most foragers have alternative bands they can join, but the number is very limited. If the individual runs out of bands, in some environments he and his family are likely to perish without the cooperation and sharing that are advantageous in making a living. In the Arctic, where solitary existence meant all but certain death, fugitive deviants sometimes managed to establish colonies of outcasts—murderers or men who had stolen other men’s wives and had to flee (Freuchen 1961; see also Balikci 1970). Inuit speakers in these deviant colonies survived by working together just as people in normal bands did.
Social control involves far more than an outraged group’s suddenly deciding to employ dramatic sanctions. In any small group anywhere, people keep track of one another’s behavior and try to read the underlying motives (e.g., Haviland 1977). Types of deviance that all human groups watch for, gossip about, and react to, include murder within the group, heavily self-interested verbal deception, theft, and stinginess or failure to cooperate when this is appropriate. On the positive side, foragers talk about generosity, cooperativeness, honesty, and other prosocial behaviors that involve good will. In effect, the band keeps a dossier on every individual, noting positive and negative points. Group members exercise the right to take action if a deviant begins to intimidate other group members individually—or threatens the social equilibrium of the group or its very ability to function. When people move from small private discussions to group consensus and aggressive public action, the result is active social control.
Most social control involves implementing manipulative sanctions on a highly deliberate basis. Gossiping, however, a stealthy activity by which other people’s moral dossiers are constantly reviewed, is not intended to be manipulative. It amounts to a covert exercise in information processing—as well as a satisfying and recurrent social activity. In spite of the secrecy, everyone knows that gossiping is constantly taking place; anyone can be a target. This knowledge serves as a deterrent, for most foragers worry about the opinion of their peers and try to exert self-control accordingly. In some cases they may be working against strong temptations, one of which is to dominate one’s fellow group members. In other cases they may be unusually thick-skinned, and not care what people are saying as long as they can have their way.
When sanctioning becomes active, a cool manner of greeting can be an ominous signal, one that can quickly lead to direct criticism or even ridicule. Being made fun of by peers is particularly hurtful if one is bound to live forever in a very small cluster of bands and is unable to escape one’s reputation. Some potential upstarts are easily put in their place by ridicule, but others may be less sensitive—or more driven. The grievous or habitual offender is likely to meet with harsher sanctions: he may be ostracized, as we saw with the Utku—by silence or active shunning—or he may be expelled from the group (Gruter and Masters 1986). If an upstart becomes dangerous to the life or liberty of others and is not susceptible to lesser sanctions, we also shall see that fearful or morally outraged foragers go for the ultimate form of social distancing: execution.
A cardinal act of political deviance is to attempt to set oneself above another person in a way that is belittling, or, worse, to try to give direct orders to one’s peers. The available sanctions run from criticism to ridicule to execution. When it is a leader who oversteps, special sanctions are available. These include pointed disobedience, desertion of the leader by moving to a different band, or formally deposing the person from the group-leadership role (assuming that it exists).
To document such patterns of political control, I now survey the specifics of sanctioning on four continents: Australia, North America, Africa, and Asia. In general, I shall discuss foragers who continue to live in fully nomadic bands, although sometimes data were obtained after these people settled around missions. I emphasize in advance that much egalitarian sanctioning is relatively subtle and preemptive, and therefore seriously underreported. But the tip of this iceberg sometimes becomes obvious, and for that reason we do have some unambiguous reports of political crises in which upstarts seriously challenge their peers and the latter react.
Public Opinion, Criticism, and Ridicule
An anecdote from Australia illustrates the relationship between gossiping, public opinion, and the movement of foragers to criticize political upstarts to their faces. For the recently settled Pintupi Aborigines, Myers (1986:224) mentions that in the old days “putting oneself forward and taking responsibility became traditionally important dimensions of an older man’s identity,” but at the same time he emphasizes that “the possibility of asserting oneself too much is fraught with danger.” He tells of a leader of one little community who came to be perceived as thinking he was better than the rest and who inappropriately made decisions on his own. First public opinion went against him, then serious direct criticisms were made. When he died in the middle of a ceremony, it was assumed that his untoward behavior had invited sorcery. Myers finishes the anecdote by saying, “One should assert one’s autonomy only in ways that do not threaten the equality and autonomy of others.”
When criticism becomes both public and very aggressive, a visitor can readily observe aroused public opinion in action. On the Kalahari Desert the foragers studied by Cashdan (1980:116) deliberately cut down braggarts, just as the !Kung do and the Mbuti Forest Pygmies do (Turnbull 1965:180) when a leading hunter becomes overassertive. Criticism is a direct way of expressing displeasure and giving the deviant cues as to what needs to be corrected.
Ridicule is a form of criticism that has a special sting. Its use is reported for the Paliyans of India studied by Gardner (1969:157): when men trying to exert leadership in a crisis were manipulatively invoking the gods, the rank and file mocked both the leaders and the gods they invoked. Ridicule also is applied to leading men among the Mbuti Pygmies (Turnbull 1965:180, 183), and it is reported for the acculturating Ngukurr Aborigines in Australia (Bern 1987:218). Lee (1982:45) says that !Kung men who put on airs may be called Big Chief just to take them down a peg. Among the Hadza of Tanzania, Woodburn (1982) relates that when a would-be chief tried to persuade other Hadza to work for him, they made it clear that his efforts amused them. These examples illustrate general mechanisms of social control that are predictably found in hunting bands. They are applied to anyone who begins to behave as an upstart, including leaders.
Disobeying Leaders Who Try to Command
Absolutely critical to the welfare or survival of people living in hunting bands are the migration decisions they make, and these are arrived at by forming a consensus (see Mithen 1990; Knauft 1991; Boehm 1996). Such decisions may be needed half a dozen times a year or more, and many of them are routine. Migration is logical when resources within easy range of the current camp have been harvested or when predictable seasonal changes shift the distribution of food resources, as with Eskimos who every year move from sealing on the winter ice to inland lake fishing to caribou hunting. Even these routine decisions have to be adjusted every season for microecological variations. Another reason to migrate is a drought or some other major perturbation, including a political threat from another group. The foragers’ dilemma is to make use of the wisest heads available, yet prevent these gifted people from gaining undue political influence or power.
One preventive measure is to keep the authority to decide with the group as a whole, and consensus-seeking does just that. Typically, all the adults are free to participate, and in a protracted discussion various opinions are weighed by the group. Silberbauer (1982) provides an astute assessment of Kalahari G/wi hunters and their decision process. Unlike tribes, whose members all tend to assemble for a decision meeting, the G/wi discuss their alternatives in small subgroups, sometimes privately and sometimes publicly, looking to arrive at a consensus. This type of political process seems to be widespread (Knauft 1991). At the end—as group opinion begins to emerge—strong social pressure can be exerted on those holding a minority opinion to agree to the majority strategy (for well-documented tribal examples, see Boehm 1996). The reason for such pressure is obvious to foragers and anthropologists alike. A divided band will fission, and the smaller social segments will profit less from the cooperation and sharing that reduces variance in food intake. The members also will lose an aspect of social life they treasure.
Bands do divide temporarily, for hunter-gatherers have to be realists (Kelly 1995). During a season when resources predictably become widely dispersed, individual households or small clusters of households may spread out. As soon as they can, they join again in a band of 30 to 50 or more persons. If just their immediate area is suffering a serious drought, the constituent households may atomize and move to different bands in more favored locations where they have in-laws or relatives or trading partners (for example, Wiessner 1982, 1996). Whenever they are able to do so, however, foragers will migrate as an entire band.
Because these decision-making junctures can be crucial to reproductive success, band members look to their most able personalities for guidance. In this context individual tendencies to dominate or control can easily be stimulated, particularly if the group has chosen to designate one of its members as permanent band leader (as opposed to utilizing a series of functional decision-leaders). In effect, influence can whet the appetite for power, and the rank and file keep this in mind.
We have seen that ridicule can be one effective instrument of control, in that it keeps a gifted leader’s tendencies to gain authority in check at the same time that his services continue to be exploited by the group. Another check is simply to ignore any orders given by such a person—that is, disobey him. We have seen already how the Utku in their acculturating band used passive disobedience to put Inuttiaq in his place. In North America the Arapaho, having lost respect for a leader, let him remain titularly their chief but pointedly ignored him whenever he tried to assert himself (Hilger 1952:189). Among the Bihor of India, members of a hunting party simply ignored the lead taken by an influential shaman who knew little about hunting (Williams 1969:149). In South America, Holmberg (1950:149) reports a chief’s being ignored when he insisted on sharing a number of small game brought in by men in his band.
Stronger Social Distancing
Criticism, ridicule, and disobedience, in conjunction with customs that tend to equalize prestige from hunting, will not always do the job. Ostracism (taken in a restricted sense as the silent treatment) is one way of putting a deviant on notice, and at the same time of gaining enough distance so that others can be insulated from the aberrant behaviors. We have seen that mild ostracism can allow a political upstart to stay with the group, hopefully to experience some behavioral modifications and gain social reentry. Permanent expulsion from the group, or the group’s quietly moving away, carries the distancing still further and suggests that redemption possibilities have been set aside.
The fact that all the women and men in the group disapprove of an individual is as devastating to that forager as it was to Jean Briggs. Unanimity is what gives ostracism its sting: it really hurts when one’s entire social world is a few dozen people and they act in concert to ignore the trespasser. Aside from Briggs’s detailed description of the problems of Niqi and her family, specific ostracism episodes are not chronicled frequently or in detail—at least, in a political context. However, a case of ostracism within the band is reported for the Mbuti Forest Pygmies (Turnbull 1965:228), and not infrequently ostracism is listed as a moral sanction in forager ethnographies (e.g., Balikci 1970; Wiessner 1996). It is probably safe to say that among foragers this type of social distancing is widespread, probably universal. A specifically political case reported for the Aranda in Australia by Strehlow (1947:168) involved an older Aborigine who arrogantly tried to usurp the ritual rights of others and was sent away from the group for several weeks. Because the exile was temporary, I would classify this case as a strong instance of ostracism rather than expulsion.
Silberbauer (1982) discusses G/wi ostracism, and while there is no example of its being applied to a political upstart, it is worth noting that this measure can be applied to any deviant who fails to mend his ways. Band members will antagonize the miscreant by pretending not to hear him, by supposedly misunderstanding what he says, or by frustrating him in other ways. If protracted, such treatment can cause the deviant to join some other band that will have him. Otherwise he may have to migrate several times a year, from one band to another. Such ostracism goes well beyond what Briggs reported for the Utku, which was relatively unaggressive. Eskimos do rather frequently execute deviants, though, and it seems likely that they are capable of stronger types of ostracism that more closely approach shunning.
A sanctioning measure that effects actual removal of a miscreant with a minimum of confrontation is desertion. Rather than trying to expel a possibly dangerous group member who is too strong as leader, the band may find it easier to move away. For example, when Geronimo’s irrepressible political policies became so heroic that they were all but suicidal, his Apache followers simply refused to follow him any longer and went their own way (Clastres 1977:178). In Malaysia, the Batek similarly moved away from men who were too belligerent (Endicott 1988:122). Among the Andaman Islanders in Asia, a disenchanted minority would go to a different group if they disagreed with their leader (Man 1882:109). Among the Apache, people also would join other bands if their chief was dishonest, unreliable, or a liar (Basehart 1970:101), and the same is true of the Southern Ute at the level of dissatisfied families (Opler 1940:169).
Another measure, one that involves the group as a whole, is to allow an undesirable leader to stay in the band but to depose him as leader and choose another. In North America, this procedure was reported for the Coeur d’Alene (Teit 1930:153); similarly, among the Assiniboin, noteworthy meanness or parsimony could result in overthrow (Denig 1930:449). Among the California Yokuts, largely sedentary foragers who were rather hierarchical but retained an egalitarian ethos, a weak “hereditary” chief who made unfair decisions or was suspected of too much self-aggrandizement was not formally deposed—but he was ignored in favor of another chief (Gayton 1930:410–411). Obviously, not all deposing of leaders was tied to arrogance, bossiness, or some other failure in honoring the egalitarian ethos. Among the Alaskan Eskimos, the umiak leader, who coordinated hunts for big sea mammals using a large boat, would be deposed if his leadership made for a season without a kill (Riches 1982:139). But often deposition involved egalitarian ire, rather than dissatisfaction with the strategic quality of leadership.
In egalitarian societies, the overstepping leader is basically vulnerable: he does not personally control local natural resources, nor is he usually able to physically coerce followers to retain him. He is disposable, desertable, and generally dispensable, even though his strategic value to the group weighs into the equation. If he becomes a serious political problem, it usually is feasible to expel him from the group or desert him. If he is too intimidating, his peers may wish to pursue a different course.
Elimination of Upstarts
Regularly, but not frequently, critical domination episodes with feared individuals occur, in which hunters are too cowed to use criticism, ridicule, disobedience, ostracism, deposition, desertion, or expulsion as a way of resolving their political predicament. The tactical problem is obvious: whoever speaks up first may be putting his life in danger. The danger may involve a physical attack, or in bands that have shamans it may also incorporate sorcery.
When a severe domination episode is ongoing, the band’s social dominance hierarchy is tipped 180 degrees: it has assumed an orthodox, despotic form, with an alpha individual at the top of the power pyramid and the formerly “in-control” rank and file at the bottom. If such domination were to continue to the end of the dominator’s lifetime, and if the same power role were to be transmitted to a successor, with parallel adjustment of the ethos, a reverse dominance hierarchy would have given way to an orthodox hierarchy. Among mobile foragers we do have a number of reports of temporary domination episodes on various continents. Nowhere are these foragers hierarchical, as opposed to egalitarian. As long as they remain nomadic rather than sedentary, hunter-gatherers have been able to take care of political business, even when the threat to their egalitarian order is dire—and personally threatening.
When a menacing personality enters the political scene, I have suggested that people may not dare to exercise social control because they are too intimidated. This is particularly true of recidivist murderers, or of very powerful shamans who can “kill” through supernatural attacks. If lesser sanctions do not come into play, the upstart may feel confident enough to intimidate his entire band, just as an alpha male chimpanzee does. His political tool is not vigorous domination displays, but a frightening reputation based on past aggressive attitudes and actions. Where a personality given to dominance is allowed such latitude, it is likely that the dominance will move in the direction of despotism. Execution is an obvious answer, but there are attendant difficulties. A practical problem is the fear of setting off a chain of killings, for an angry relative of the deviant may feel compelled to exact revenge. Another practical problem is the potential killing of the executioner as he attempts assassination. Furthermore, foragers basically codify any killing within the group as a serious act of deviance.
Before we examine some cases of execution of tyrants, it will be useful to examine the role that homicide plays in forager life generally (see Knauft 1991). Even among the simpler kinds of foragers, who once were thought to be peaceable, homicide is quite frequent. The threat looms in spite of the fact that hunter-gatherers living in bands are strongly oriented toward peaceful cooperation and resolution of conflict. Actually, resolution of smoldering controversies can be quite efficient; it is the heated conflicts that foragers handle clumsily (Knauft 1991; see also von Fürer-Haimendorf 1967). One reason is the absence of any formalized authority, such as a strong chief or an egalitarian council of elders that is culturally empowered to deal with serious deviancy. As a result, once a conflict heats up, there is no truly effective means of intervention. In fact, would-be peacemakers themselves have been killed (for instance, Lee 1979).
Four broad varieties of hunter-gatherer homicide seem to exist within the band. One is based on a specific grievance, such as discovered adultery that triggers a jealous rage. For the group, that problem is ephemeral: it involves only two men, and usually the killer quickly leaves his band to avoid being killed by his victim’s relatives. The episode also seems to be largely situational, in that a man who kills another in a jealous rage is not necessarily a type who seeks to dominate his peers in other contexts.
A second type of killing takes place when a person’s close relative has been killed and he seeks to retaliate. Usually such killings are averted by the original killer’s moving to a different band. When they do take place, again the revenge killer is simply caught in special circumstances; he is not necessarily a bully or would-be tyrant.
The third type of internecine homicide involves a bullying recidivist killer, possibly a psychotic, who in effect intimidates his group and is in a position to continue the pattern. This type of homicide begets yet a fourth type, which we may count as a version of capital punishment. While it is sometimes referred to as assassination, the entire group decides on this measure, often delegating to a relative of the deviant the role of executioner and thereby obviating the possibility of subsequent revenge killing.
I should also mention homicide that takes place between bands (see Daly and Wilson 1988). The majority of foragers engage in either feuding (so-called internal warfare) or larger-scale fighting between groups (Ember 1978), and of these well over half engage in fighting at least once every two years. Within the group, retaliation is a function of angry needs for revenge and accessibility of opponents. Between groups, revenge killing becomes more complicated. Intergroup political rivalry and political domination are involved, with long-term political considerations that affect an entire group. That is, to leave such a killing unavenged can invite further victimization (Balikci 1970; Daly and Wilson 1988).
It is killings within the band that concern us here. Such homicides are headed off early if possible, and when they are imminent, feeble efforts may be made to intervene. Once they have taken place, these intragroup homicides, caused by situations of jealously or revenge, do not usually trigger moralistic sanctioning by the entire group—even though killing is strongly disapproved. The aggressor simply leaves his band. Such a step can be perilous in terms of subsistence, but usually a nearby band will accept him.
Another permutation is the singular deviant colonies mentioned earlier. Peter Freuchen, an anthropologist who married an Eskimo, personally knew some of the men in such a colony. It seems plausible that a colony of refugee deviants would have more than its share of aggressors, and in a modernizing context Freuchen (1961) relates how one such man acted successfully as a despotic bully. First, he took away the wife of another colonist and proceeded to taunt the man. Then he took a second man’s wife and forbade him even to speak with her. Eventually, the tyrant was assassinated by one of these victims and another man.
In pre-contact times, lethal sanctions were applied to recidivist murderers in Eskimo bands (Hoebel 1954:88–92). Carefully selected individuals seem to have actually dispatched the offenders, usually male kinsmen of the target, but it was the entire group that conspired to eliminate them. The same is reported of others, like the Comanche (Hoebel 1940), and the Copper Eskimo (Damas 1972). In Arnhem Land, Australian Aborigines traditionally eliminated aggressive men who tried to dominate them (Berndt and Berndt 1964:289), whereas after European contact it seems likely that such executions were inhibited because of colonial interference. Woodburn (1982:436) points out that because Hadza men in Africa are armed with lethal weapons used to hunt large game, they can easily assassinate someone they fear—in the victim’s sleep, or by ambush. A Hadza hunter need only be sure that the surprise killing is executed efficiently, and his risk is low. Lee (1979) tells about an intimidating !Kung recidivist killer in the Kalahari who (on an impromptu basis) was executed so inefficiently that others became casualties as well—and this took place in broad daylight.
Draper (1978:80) states that the !Kung execute incorrigible offenders, much as the Eskimo collectively kill recidivist murderers. Lee agrees with this generalization (1982:47), saying that a !Kung community may execute “extremely aggressive men” by agreement of the entire band. Any execution of an overaggressive individual that is agreed on by the local moral community fits the category of antiauthoritarian sanctioning and qualifies informally as legitimized capital punishment.
That executions by band members were collective is not always specified in detail, but usually is strongly implied. It was explicit with Alaskan Eskimos (Weyer 1932), where communities put individuals to death for three types of malfeasance (see also Rasmussen 1931:236). One was witchcraft, a reputation for which could lead to intimidation and tyranny; another was a brutal temperament, which led to bullying; the third was a penchant for adultery, which probably had fewer political ramifications than the other two.
Colonial interference (or the threat thereof) is a factor that may help to account for the relatively few ethnographic accounts of domination episodes terminated by assassination. However, there are other pertinent reports for Australia. Spencer and Gillen (1976:263) recount that the Iliaura got rid of a man who was “very quarrelsome and strong in magic” by handing him over to an Arunta vengeance party, an indirect type of capital punishment that is paralleled at the tribal level (Boehm 1985). The idea is to get rid of a troublemaker by making it clear to a different group, which is seeking revenge against one’s own group, that if it wreaks vengeance on the individual in question no further retaliation will take place.
Thus, reports of execution of individuals who behave too aggressively are available for Eskimos, North American Indians, Australian Aborigines, and African foragers. Because there are relatively few behaviorally rich ethnographic reports from Asia and South America, my suspicion is that the pattern may be generalized to nomadic foragers in general. The fact that men are hunters of large game, and often engage in some form of warfare, makes them experts at killing. The typical domination episode involves a male who seriously intimidates people at the level of lethal threat, then is dispatched by his own male kinsman with the approval of the group.
That shamans are able to violate the autonomy of others is richly illustrated by Balikci’s (1970:233) account of the Netsilik Eskimos. In one instance, when people were asking a shaman to stop a violent snowstorm, he brought personal interests into his public practice, as it were. He said that his tutelary spirit, through him, needed to have sexual intercourse with two girls. The father of one girl agreed, but the husband of the second girl refused, pointing out that tutelary spirits cannot copulate with mortals. More generally, Balikci’s informants agreed that a shaman who desired a woman was likely to threaten her with illness, in order to take advantage of her sexually. Shamans were expected to be healers and helpers of the community, so this approach clearly constituted an abuse of power.
Not all hunter-gatherer bands have shamans or sorcerers. But Eskimos who became candidates for antiauthoritarian execution were often fine hunters and shamans, strong men who turned domineering. It was dangerous to cross such persons, because they could use sorcery on their opponents. From Greenland came short-term reports by early Scandinavian explorers of men who committed murder in Eskimo bands and were not sanctioned by their peers (see Mirsky 1937). One physically powerful shaman became a recidivist killer in his group, whose intimidated members simply treated him with great “respect.” In this well-reported domination episode a man was seriously intimidating others in his band, yet execution had not been used as an ultimate sanction. (This single example of unresolved abuse of power is of interest in considering the falsification of the hypotheses with which I am working, and I shall return to it later.)
In connection with Arctic sorcery, Balikci (1970) reports a case in central Canada of an old woman believed to have engaged in sorcery to hurt a man who had rejected her. When he died, she and her sons were assassinated for having engaged in such practices. For the mainly foraging Gebusi of New Guinea, Knauft (1987:475–476) reports executions of witches, who tend to be individuals viewed as unusually aggressive. I hesitate to include this type of assassination with those motivated by an egalitarian ethos, because witchcraft executions are not usually rationalized in political terms (Boehm 1993). In the other cases, when normal individuals tyrannize entire groups and are executed, it is reasonable to assume that the assassination is due to a conscious dislike of being dominated.
With witchcraft it is necessary to deal with motives that are less than conscious, a difficult enough feat in one’s own culture. All the same, it is worth noting that in most cultures in which witchcraft executions take place, the witches are apt to be people who are stingy or overly aggressive (see Kluckhohn 1944). Both of these qualities clash strongly with an egalitarian ethos.
The Effect of Egalitarian Sanctions
Service (1975:48–49), discussing deviance and conflict, says that “in a small primitive society, much of social life is smoothly regulated by these codes, rules, expectations, habits, and customs that are related to etiquette, ethic, and role. And because these are not explicit, nor revealed by frequent breaches, the society might give the impression of freedom and lack of conflict, as Rousseau would have it.” It seems to be characteristic of forager bands that most of the time social life proceeds harmoniously, even though once in a while serious problems erupt (Knauft 1987, 1991).
I had to examine scores of forager ethnographies to find a few dozen usable reports of egalitarian sanctioning, and I believe that the sensitivity of most hunter-gatherers to subtle social cues is a factor in this relatively modest level of reported political conflict. With respect to deviance, bands tend to be highly conformist societies—in spite of the heavy emphasis on personal autonomy. Anthropologists visiting a culture for a year or two therefore may be impressed by an apparent lack of competition and conflict. But even as I worked with a small number of detailed cases, it became apparent that political processes everywhere were similar, and that the sanctioning methods I identified were likely to be widely distributed.
To summarize, the specific antiauthoritarian sanctions I encountered followed a continuum from moderate (criticism, ridicule, or disobedience) to strong (ostracism or expulsion, deposition or desertion) to ultimate (execution). The number of reliable ethnographic citations is too small to use a statistical sampling approach, too small to attempt a regional analysis, and also too small to analyze various subtypes of foragers. My justification for drawing the conclusions I have is that this is the only evidence available to investigate an extremely important question.
Had I employed cross-cultural sampling techniques, my results would have been statistically invalid, woefully so. The alternative I followed was to set aside sampling methods and search for at least a large handful of ethnographic reports that contained rich or adequate data—wherever they might be found. Although I like to work with qualitative analysis, I recognize that generalizations based on such an approach raise special issues with respect to “falsifiability” (Popper 1959).
One empirical generalization difficult to deny is that in Africa, Asia, Australia, South America, and North America are clear-cut instances of upstarts being dealt with intentionally by their peers. It is more difficult to assert that the entire range of political sanctions can be found on every continent where hunter-gatherers have been studied. However, execution is reported on three, desertion on two. It is my belief that the overall pattern I have described is universal, or certainly very widespread, among mobile hunter-gatherers. Is this empirical conclusion testable?
If one moves from sanctioning of political upstarts to social sanctioning in general (for incest, thievery, ritual violations, cheating, and so on), I believe that most of the sanctions I have discussed could be found on the same continents. A complete survey of the world ethnographic literature to this end would be costly, but it would provide an indirect means of testing the empirical claims I am making about political sanctioning. My assumption is that if forager gossiping, ridicule, criticism, ostracism, expulsion from the group, and execution could be shown to be universal, one might assume that these same sanctions were applicable to acts of deviancy that were specifically political.
My own survey has covered perhaps half of the ethnography available in English or French, but it was expediently designed to favor the better ethnographies. A superior methodology would be to survey not only the available ethnographies but also the field notes of hunter-gatherer ethnographers, and to query living scholars directly. It is possible that my basic hypotheses would stand, albeit with regional or other variations. The claim I make is that basically hunter-gatherers everywhere use the same means to keep their bands equalized that they use to curb deviancy in general.
What about potential falsification of the larger hypothesis that egalitarianism is caused by political intentions and political dynamics, rather than by environmental constraints or social structure? I published this hypothesis in 1993, and no one has attempted to demonstrate the existence of any other single cause sufficient to reverse human dominance hierarchies. Because ethnographers who study foragers usually provide abundant information about social structure, subsistence activities, and the natural environment, the information necessary for falsification of my universal hypothesis, or for support of competing hypotheses, would seem to be available.
A more fundamental hypothesis (Boehm 1993, 1994b, 1997b) is that human nature makes people prone to compete politically and dominate one another. At least one ethnographer who has studied nomadic foragers seems to agree (Wiessner 1996:185). While I shall develop this hypothesis further in the pages that follow, it may be difficult to falsify—particularly if one insists on waiting to see the genes responsible. Criteria of relative plausibility can, however, be applied.
A complementary hypothesis is that sanctioning which is antiauthoritarian (Gardner 1991) or counterdominant (Erdal and Whiten 1994) is extremely effective in fulfilling the egalitarian ethos. This thesis could be partially falsified if numerous instances were found of domination episodes that were successful in converting a reverse dominance hierarchy into an orthodox one. The closest we have come is the physically powerful Greenland Eskimo shaman who was a recidivist-murderer, for he had not yet been executed when ethnographic observation ended. I know of no Eskimo or other nomadic band in which such an intimidator ruled or dominated for his entire lifetime, or passed such political power to a successor. For that reason, I surmise that the man in question was eventually dealt with—or that for some reason the Greenland Eskimos were exceptional.
It is conceivable that a total search of world ethnography would unearth the kind of counterexample I describe, and I confess I would be happy to see my own hypothesis about the total efficacy of mobile egalitarian bands falsified—at least, in its absolute form. A single instance of a band’s permanently succumbing to an upstart would provide a possible explanation for how a handful of relatively sedentary foragers, people like the Kwakiutl of America’s Northwest Coast and the Calusa of Florida (see Kelly 1995), became hierarchical as opposed to egalitarian.
Reverse Dominance Hierarchy
Hunter-gatherers in their bands may seem bereft of government as we know it, particularly if one looks to political structure—to the existence of offices or roles involving unambiguous lines of personal authority. Outside the family, there is very little delegated, legitimate, effective authority—although military activities may call for it temporarily in specific circumstances. Yet on a collective basis these people do manipulate and control their social and political life to a substantial degree, by acting as a moral community. One way they govern themselves is by imposing an egalitarian blueprint on their social and political life; the main political actors are able to do this cooperatively, behaving as one large and somewhat amorphous political authority that makes its decisions by consensus.
The result is nothing like anarchy—a term overly evocative of romantic (or pejorative) sentiment. Anarchy suggests an absence of power and control, but the band as a cohesive group of adults is in a position to speak with collective authority—and to behave dominantly in governing the behavior of individual deviants. As Service indicated, this power usually remains latent. But it is always there, assuming that the band remains in agreement about its moral issues—and avoids serious political factions by fissioning. Bands are normally in a position to act as well-unified moral communities.
As practical political philosophers, foragers perceive quite correctly that self-aggrandizement and individual authority are threats to personal autonomy. When upstarts try to make inroads against an egalitarian social order, they will be quickly recognized and, in many cases, quickly curbed on a preemptive basis. One reason for this sensitivity is that the oral tradition of a band (which includes knowledge from adjacent bands) will preserve stories about serious domination episodes. There is little doubt that many of the ethnographic reports of executions in my survey were based on such traditions, as opposed to direct ethnographic observation.
An important additional factor is that authority tends to be present, legitimate, and relatively unrestrained within the household. Dominant control is directed at children, and often at wives, so acts of interpersonal domination are witnessed constantly. Band members are kept aware of the danger of letting individuals develop authority that extends beyond the family. In many bands, men in particular must carefully shift gears when they move from a family-head role, in which a strong, paternal authority style may be socially acceptable, to a band-member role, in which it is not. We saw that Inuttiaq did this kind of shifting very competently.
Hunter-gatherers understand human nature, as well as specific personalities. They seem to realize that if a little authority is permitted to develop, then a normal human leader is likely to want more. He may want more authority because he enjoys bossing people around, or he may simply wish to make his job as leader less complicated. But as a political human being capable of status rivalry and domination, he is not about to receive the benefit of the doubt from his peers.
Individual hunter-gatherers also comprehend that the safest way to neutralize the growth of authority is to act preemptively. Lee’s detailed account of how the !Kung use ridicule made that obvious. When the other main political actors are afraid to exert such pressure, as with a malevolent shaman or a recidivist killer, they open themselves to stressful domination episodes and eventually must resort to assassination if they are to reclaim their individual autonomy.
Gardner (1991) and Erdal and Whiten (1994, 1996) have helped to characterize the nature of this struggle, which if not resolved on a preemptive basis can lead to bloody executions. It is primarily on the basis of vigilance that hunter-gatherers have kept their societies egalitarian in spite of individual tendencies that could lead to despotism. Over the long term, the result is a reverse social dominance hierarchy (Boehm 1993) with the subordinates firmly in charge.
The Evolutionary Position of Egalitarian Foragers
One of the great mysteries of social evolution is the transition from egalitarian society to hierarchical society. Extant foragers seem to be invariably egalitarian, as long as they remain basically nomadic. As foragers become sedentary and collect in larger groups that continue to depend on foraging, a hierarchical lifestyle sometimes will arise, with leadership that is relatively strong. With such change comes a major adjustment of the ethos: band members begin to accept competition, social stratification, and authority at the group level. This shift took place among certain hunter-gatherer groups in North America: people lived in year-round villages, stored food, had social classes and leaders with real authority—and no egalitarian ethos was reported (Kelly 1995; see also Rosman and Rubel 1986).
Thus, a hunting and gathering way of life in itself does not guarantee a decisively egalitarian political orientation; nomadism and absence of food storage (see Woodburn 1982) also seem to be needed. Nomadism in itself does not guarantee egalitarianism either, for after domestication of animals some pastoral nomads were egalitarian but others became hierarchical (Salzman 1979; L’Equipe écologie 1979). Nor does becoming sedentary and storing food spell the end of an egalitarian ethos and political way of life. Neighbors of the Kwakiutl such as the Tolowa and Coastal Yurok also lived in year-round villages with food storage (Gould 1982), but they kept their leaders weak and were politically egalitarian.
We shall see in the next chapter that tribal egalitarianism is very similar to that of the hunter-gatherers we have been discussing. Half a century ago thousands of these tribal societies existed; so it is logical to conclude that as they began to domesticate plants and animals, the vast majority of egalitarian hunter-gatherers made a direct political transition to being egalitarian tribesmen. Let us look now at tribesmen, with their similarly “equalizing” approach to politics.