ANTHROP 2R03 Lecture Notes - Original Affluent Society, Hunter-Gatherer, Unilineality
15 Nov 2013
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Hired on the basis of skills and abilities, not kinship. Because they have always been integrated throughout history. Slide 7 quote: suppose gellner is right in describing the central feature of modernity", which is the separation of spheres or, put another way, the restraint" of each. The characteristic feature of most civilisations and societies is that over time one or other of the major institutions gains weight and dominates. Kinship is king" on the whole in hunter- gatherer and tribal societies, and all the rest is embedded. Religion or politics, or a mixture of the two dominates in peasantries, as in hindu or islamic civilisation. All these are instances where society freezes", to use levi-strauss"s metaphor, so that status comes to dominate, whether kinship status as in unilineal kinship systems, or religious status, as in caste societies, or political status as in communism. What is peculiar is a situation where nothing dominates (macfarlane 1996:215): kinship is king.
