ANTHROP 1AB3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Political Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Legal Anthropology
10 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
There are two subfields of cultural anthropology: political anthropology talks about human behaviour and power-in terms of who has the power, abuse of power, degree of power and social conflicts, legal anthropology finds solutions to resolve conflict. Power is the ability takes action with the possibility to use force: ex. Police has power to stop people in society. Authority is the ability to take action based on your status in society: ex. Influence is the ability to take action by displaying social or moral pressure. All three of these terms are relational. Power implies to force and rank relationships while authority and influences offers more cooperative decision- making. All members of a band are treated as equals. No one is better than anyone else and that includes the leader. Despite being the leader, the leader is treated the same as all members of that band. However they may have more authority and influences in terms of being a respected person.
