ANT 252 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Edward Burnett Tylor, Social Stratification, Horticulture
Document Summary
Sought to classify the world"s diverse political systems and explain how complex political systems, especially states, had evolved from simpler forms of social and political organization. Came up with a revolutionary definition of culture. Thought there were stages of cultural development. This is why we should study unfamiliar societies, so we can see what we were like in the past. But boas disagreed, and said that all cultures don"t go through the same stages of development, and that we couldn"t look at other cultures to understand our own. Boas wanted real evidence before theorizing anything about cultures. Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states (see table in chapter) Band: a small nomadic, and self-sufficient group of anywhere from. 25 to 150 individuals with face-to-face social relationships, usually egalitarian. Tribe: a type of pastoralist or horticulturist society with populations usually numbering in the hundreds or thousands in which leadership is more stable than that of a band, with social relations based on reciprocal exchange.
