Kings and Kingship

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Kings and Kingship
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Hopi

• Precarious environment
• Produce corn hunt small animals
• Emphasize cooperation
• Informal Authority
• Have chiefs but not inherited rank no real
  authority gt symbolic office

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Hopi Social Order

• Matrilineal/Matrilocal
• Exogamous Clans Phratries
• Ceremonial societies
• Sponsored by specific clan but need others to
  cooperate
• Kachina ritual
• initiation

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Nyoro

• Lived in what is now Uganda
• Kingdom of 100,000 people
• Non-egalitarian (stratified) society
• King (mukama)
• Aristocrats (close genealogical link to mukama)
• Lords (chiefs)
• Commoners

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Problems of Social Control

• controlling the vast peasant population.
• collecting taxes or tribute.
• controlling his territorial chiefs and warriors
• legitimating his authority (as Bito)

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Myths and Authority

• Charter Myths
• Establish social divisions
• Establish mukama as leader
• Establish Bito as legitimate rulers of Nyoro
• Link the present dynasty with previous ones
• Link the present Mukama with the 1st through an
  unbroken patrilineal descent line

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Kingship Feudalism

• Divine King
• gt Kings health kingdoms health
• Feudal system
• a political system in which superiors delegate
  authority and rewards to inferiors in return for
  their personal loyalty and payment of tribute.
• King gives land peasants chiefs give tribute
  loyalty

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Maintaining Loyalty through Ritual

• Transmission of Mahano (spiritual authority)
• Crown wearers
• Not concrete authority, but gain tremendous
  prestige
• Feasts and Parties

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Legitimating Inequality in America

• Secular ideologies
• Functional view of Inequality