Chapter 9 Tribes

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Chapter 9 Tribes
Members of modern-day tribes Iroquois, New York
Nuer, Sudan
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Todays Objectives

• What are the main feature of a tribal society, in
  terms of environment, technology, economy, etc.?
• How are tribes similar to bands?
• What is unique about tribes?

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Preliminary Definition

• Tribes
• From the Latin tribus, a division of the Roman
  people (not technologically advanced)
• Vague term, sometimes pejorative
• Refers to horticulturists and pastoralists with
  noncentralized sociocultural systems

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Environment/Subsistence

• Horticulturists
• People who use a limited, nonmechanized
  technology to cultivate plants.
• Slash-and-burn agriculture
• Cyclical process
• Burned vegetation, ashes nourish land
• Land left fallow for several years
• Tend to be less nomadic and more
• sedentary than foragers
• Cultures include
• Yanomamö
• Tsembaga
• Iroquois

A Yanomamö hunter
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Environment/Subsistence

• Pastoralists
• Subsistence is based on
• the care of domesticated
• animals
• Migration follows herds
• Examples Bedouins, Lapps, Nuer
• East African cattle complex
• Supplement diet with gardens
• Largely eat blood and milk from cattle, not meat

Bedouins
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Demographics and Settlement

• Carrying Capacity
• Greater than for bands
• Groups range from 100 to more than 5,000
• Median size is 2,000 people
• Territory
• Relatively settled, but nomadic within limits
• Population density of about 1 to 5 people per
  square mile of land
• cf. Durham 1,500 people per square mile, Upper
  East Side (New York City) 110,000 people per
  square mile
• Population Growth
• Slow because of limited resources
• Use same strategies as bands fissioning, sexual
  abstinence, infanticide, abortion, prolonged
  nursing

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Technology

• General technological inventions include
  woodworking, weaving, leather working, copper
  tools, ornaments, and weapons.
• Horticulturists
• Slash-and-burn hoes, axes, blowguns, bows and
  arrows, poisons
• More permanent specialized shell and woodworking
  tools
• Pastoralists
• Mobility prevents elaborate technology
• Saddles, weapons, food processing, tents

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Economics

• Reciprocity
• All three forms used
• Example of balanced reciprocity Yanomamö
• Money
• Some tribal societies use money
• Four functions reusable, standard of value,
  store of value, deferred payment
• Two types general-purpose (our currency) and
  limited-purpose (shells, cloth, salt, etc.)
• Property Ownership
• More clearly defined than bands
• Related to animal pasturage
• Exclusive right to property is rare
• Use rights defined along kinship lines, but
  arent static
• Warfare can result from invasions of space
• Personal property exists, but largely egalitarian

General-purpose money
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Social Organization

• Tribes versus Bands
• Different subsistence practices different
  social organization
• Social organization based on kinship, but with
  more rules
• Harder to leave a group
• Social relationships are more fixed and permanent
  than in bands
• Families
• Extended family (three generations)
• Larger and more stable social unit for subsistence

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Social Organization

• Descent Groups
• A social group identified by a person to trace
  actual or supposed kinship relationships
• Lineages descent groups of relatives

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Social Organization

• Unilineal Descent Groups
• Trace descent through one side
• Patrilineal descent known male ancestor
• Matrilineal descent known female ancestor
• Ambilineal descent either male or female line
• Bilateral descent both sides (as in the U.S.)
• Clans unknown ancestor or sacred plant/animal
• Phratries and moieties loose clan organizations
• Functions of descent groups
• Corporate social units
• Regulate production/distribution of goods and
  services
• Manage economic rights and obligations
  (primogeniture)
• Yanomamö patrilineage, Iroquois matrilineage

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Marriage

• Most tribal societies are exogamous
• Cross-cousin marriage
• Example Yanomamö
• Matrilineal cross-cousin marriage
• Some are endogamous
• Parallel cousin marriage
• Example Bedouin

Kinship diagram of cross-cousins ?
?
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Marriage

• Types of marriage
• Polygyny
• Occurs most frequently in tribe societies
• Ecologically and economically adaptive
• Increase of mans wealth (what about women?)
• 25 of Yanomamö marriages are polygynous
• Polyandry
• Mostly in Himalayas of northern India and Tibet
• Most common form is fraternal polyandry
  (brothers)
• Examples Toda and Nyinba
• Bridewealth exchange - economic exchange that
  symbolizes new rights and relationship
• Levirate and sororate
• Widow has to marry deceased husbands brother
  (levirate)
• Widower has to marry deceased wifes sister
  (sororate)

Tibetan polyandrous family
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Marriage

• Postmarital residence
• Patrilineal descent patrilocal residence
• Causes limited land, warfare, population
  pressure, need for cooperative work
• Matrilineal descent matrilocal residence
• Causes external warfare, absence of males
• Also avunculocal, neolocal
• Divorce
• Bridewealth helps ensure stability
• Matrilineal societies more likely to divorce

15
Gender

• Margaret Mead
• Sex and Temperament three New Guinea societies
• Arapesh feminine
• Mundugumor masculine
• Tchambuli females masculine, males feminine
  (Gewertz found this to be false)
• Patriarchy versus matriarchy
• Most societies are patriarchal
• Reproductive strategies?
• Hormonal urges for power?
• Scarcity of resources and warfare?
• Sexism
• Female roles have less prestige
• Excluded from politics, combat
• Excluded during menstruation, nursing
• Subordination, dominance, abuse, mutilation

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Gender

• Status
• Depends on contribution to subsistence, as in
  band societies.
• However, most women in tribal societies spend
  more time working the land than men but
  patriarchy is dominant.
• In matrilineal societies, women have economic and
  political power, but males also have position of
  political power and control economic resources.
• Example Iroquois

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Age

• Age sets
• Groups of people who share rights, obligations,
  duties, privileges in their community
• Examples
• Nyakyusa (East Africa)
• Sebei pastoralists
• Elderly
• Those who own property
• have higher status
• Gerontocracy elders ruling
• Israelites, Kirghiz

Tanzania - Nyakyusa land, cattle
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Political Organization

• Decentralized, open to any male, based on
  personal abilities and qualities
• Sodalities
• Primary difference from bands (Service)
• Kinship and nonkin types
• Leaders
• Recruited from descent groups
• Village headman
• Big man (Melanesia)
• Among pastoralists
• Segmentary lineage systems
• Complementary opposition

Indonesian Headman
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Tribal Warfare

• Both internal and external
• Hobbes (nasty, brutish, short lives)
• Rousseau (noble savages)
• Modern anthropologists think
• Sociobiologists believe in an aggression gene
• Most, however, feel there is no human instinct
  for aggression
• Warfare is largely the result of cultural factors
  such as demography, environment, political
  organization
• Explanations
• Yanomamö feud because of protein shortage?
• Mundurucu adaptive reproductive strategy?
• Other reasons honor, prestige, status

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Law and Conflict Resolution

• Formal and informal sanctions
• Conflict mediators
• Often older men
• Nuer leopard skin chief
• Ordeals (Ifugao of the Philippines)
• Oaths supernatural source
• bears witness
• Oracles people or things that have
• prophetic abilities

Delphic Oracle, Greece Reconstruction
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Religion

• Difficult to generalize
• Cosmic religions animism
• and shamanism
• Also familistic religions (totems)
• Examples
• Yanomamö ebene and trances
• Azande
• Witchcraft psychic ability to harm people
• Sorcery manipulation of objects to cause harm
• Good and bad sorcery
• Help people understand back luck, illness,
  injustice
• Navajo (Kluckhohn)

Yanomamö ebene ritual
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Art and Music
Pueblo Kachina Totem

• Art
• Utilitarian decorate pottery, etc.
• Ceremonial tatoos, figurines, etc.
• Music
• Various instruments
• Includes hymns, games, dance, war,
• shamanistic chanting
• Often inseparable from sacred rituals
• Often produce hypnotic rhythms

Pueblo Pottery
Native American Dreamcatcher