Seal hunting: Adelaide vs. Chloe

[Common Sense]

Show me proof it kills a shark and we have that part settled.

I posted a list of sharks killed by China for fishing purposes.

Read that.

Just like a haircut. He should be fine...just swim it off.

[Chris]

I am with you on that point @PolWatch. I don't understand why @Chris sees no government with tribal chiefs.

Because it was not government in the sense you and I understand government. You're imposing modern Western view of government as natural and necessary on primitive tribes who didn't lack government but rejected it.

[Chris]

In my city, where the Mayor leads the committee known as the city council, votes are cast and the majority view prevails. The Mayor can be in the minority.

The daily operations of government are handled by the city manager.

The Mayor can play a role in changing rules, the city manager can not. (short of helping the mayor and council)

That's government. American tribal chiefs generally--there are exceptions--had no authority other than to settle disputes, and even that, if they didn't do a good job of it, lost them their position. Other than that--and in some cases the privilege of polygamy--the chief was charged with serving the people by providing for them, in times of plenty, simply token gifts, but in hard times, literally feeding, clothing and sheltering them. Any further attempt by a chief to take charge, claim authority, to lead, was flat out rejected.

If you'd like to read more from anthropology I suggest starting with Pierre Clastres' Society Against the State.

[Chris]

The chiefs were responsible for making decisions about where to hunt, etc...in fact, in some societies, their appointment (?) was based on their ability to bring home the bacon. The tribe members obeyed the instructions of the chief. Their survival depended on having a competent leader (government). I think you are playing word games, Chris.

As far as I know, no, they were not. The people, perhaps counsels of elders, if any such decisions were even made. Who stayed home to tends the children and farm, what to plant, when, when to harvest, who went on the hunt, where, what, these had been decided over time, were just what people did.

[Bob]

As far as I know, no, they were not. The people, perhaps counsels of elders, if any such decisions were even made. Who stayed home to tends the children and farm, what to plant, when, when to harvest, who went on the hunt, where, what, these had been decided over time, were just what people did.

Chief Sitting Bull did what?

[Bob]

That's government. American tribal chiefs generally--there are exceptions--had no authority other than to settle disputes, and even that, if they didn't do a good job of it, lost them their position. Other than that--and in some cases the privilege of polygamy--the chief was charged with serving the people by providing for them, in times of plenty, simply token gifts, but in hard times, literally feeding, clothing and sheltering them. Any further attempt by a chief to take charge, claim authority, to lead, was flat out rejected.

If you'd like to read more from anthropology I suggest starting with Pierre Clastres' Society Against the State.

I am not trying to overstate the role of chiefs. i have read up on a lot of them and my belief is they had stature. They all were different. Tribes in CA were different from tribes in the far east and the Dakotas for instance. The Cherokees were very civilized and I am thinking they had councils but one leader to speak for the local tribe.

In my view, even though loosely knit, it was a form of government.

If the Chief wanted to head north to hunt and was told to go south, I believe the Chief went north and the tribe followed.

[Bob]

@Chris

The author was unknown to me but as you stated, I checked him out.

On primitive societies

Chris, I have not claimed tribes were states. I hold the opinion that for the most part, tribes did not understand owning land or water or the air or rivers or lakes.

They tended to roam particular areas but I do not believe that all tribes believed they owned parts of the earth. I think they merely used it.

It is similar to today. i do not own ocean. I know some claim parts of it, but to me it is a silly construct.

Society Against the State

Pierre Clastres

(an excerpt from Clastres' Society Against the State)

Primitive societies are societies without a State. This factual judgment, accurate in itself, actually hides an opinion, a value judgment that immediately throws doubt on the possibility of constituting political anthropology as a strict science. What the statement says, in fact, is that primitive societies are missing something - the State - that is essential to them, as it is to any other society: our own, for instance. Consequently, those societies are incomplete; they are not quite true societies--they are not civilized--their existence continues to suffer the painful experience of a lack--the lack of a State--which, try as they may, they will never make up. Whether clearly stated or not, that is what comes through in the explorers' chronicles and the work of researchers alike: society is inconceivable without the State; the State is the destiny of every society. One detects an ethnocentric bias in this approach; more often than not it is unconscious, and so the more firmly anchored. Its immediate, spontaneous reference, while perhaps not the best known, is in any case the most familiar. In effect, each one of us carries within himself, internalized like the believer's faith, the certitude that society exists for the State. How, then, can one conceive of the very existence of primitive societies if not as the rejects of universal history, anachronistic relics of a remote stage that everywhere else has been transcended? Here one recognizes ethnocentrism's other face, the complementary conviction that history is a one-way progression, that every society is condemned to enter into that history and pass through the stages which lead from savagery to civilization. "All civilized peoples were once savages," wrote Ravnal. But the assertion of an obvious evolution cannot justify a doctrine which, arbitrarily tying the state of civilization to the civilization of the State, designates the latter as the necessary end result assigned to all societies. One may ask what has kept the last of the primitive peoples as they are.

[Chris]

Chief Sitting Bull did what?

Pierre Clastres' Society Against the State goes into detail about Geronimo. From Western tales he was a great chief rebelling against the white man, no? In reality he rebelled against the Apache and their traditional ways and they rejected him as they would anyone who tried to take authoritarian control of them. Geronimo had gained much prestige in leading them in revenge against Mexicans, and he tried to use that to take them on the warpath. "In vain. Its collective goal--revenge--having been reached, the Apache society yearned for rest. ...the Apaches chose not to follow Geronimo....would regularly turn their backs on him whenever he wanted to wage his personal war. Geronimo, the last of the great North American war chiefs, who spent thirty years of his life trying to "play the chief," and never succeeded." (pages 211-12)

Walk away from what you learned in government schools.

[Chris]

@Chris

The author was unknown to me but as you stated, I checked him out.

On primitive societies

Society Against the State

Pierre Clastres

(an excerpt from Clastres' Society Against the State)

Primitive societies are societies without a State. This factual judgment, accurate in itself, actually hides an opinion, a value judgment that immediately throws doubt on the possibility of constituting political anthropology as a strict science. What the statement says, in fact, is that primitive societies are missing something - the State - that is essential to them, as it is to any other society: our own, for instance. Consequently, those societies are incomplete; they are not quite true societies--they are not civilized--their existence continues to suffer the painful experience of a lack--the lack of a State--which, try as they may, they will never make up. Whether clearly stated or not, that is what comes through in the explorers' chronicles and the work of researchers alike: society is inconceivable without the State; the State is the destiny of every society. One detects an ethnocentric bias in this approach; more often than not it is unconscious, and so the more firmly anchored. Its immediate, spontaneous reference, while perhaps not the best known, is in any case the most familiar. In effect, each one of us carries within himself, internalized like the believer's faith, the certitude that society exists for the State. How, then, can one conceive of the very existence of primitive societies if not as the rejects of universal history, anachronistic relics of a remote stage that everywhere else has been transcended? Here one recognizes ethnocentrism's other face, the complementary conviction that history is a one-way progression, that every society is condemned to enter into that history and pass through the stages which lead from savagery to civilization. "All civilized peoples were once savages," wrote Ravnal. But the assertion of an obvious evolution cannot justify a doctrine which, arbitrarily tying the state of civilization to the civilization of the State, designates the latter as the necessary end result assigned to all societies. One may ask what has kept the last of the primitive peoples as they are.

Exactly. The state of civilization simply does not imply the civilization of the State. It is not necessary.

[Bob]

Exactly. The state of civilization simply does not imply the civilization of the State. It is not necessary.

That does not dismiss my claim about government. It does blow off state, but government and state is not the same thing.

Take the case of Iraq.

State during Saddam was very different from state following Saddam.

But both amount to government.