The Cultural Instability of Egalitarian Societies

Brunton, Ron

doi:10.2307/2804294

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In the modern setting-with their privileged access to external sources of economic and political power, sophisticated weapons, and Swiss bank accounts-successful big men like Siyad and his successors, the so-called warlords, can in this egalitarian society pluck the strings of kinship to their own advantage and to an extent and on a scale beyond anything realised before. tLewis 1994:233-234] The sense in which Lewis invokes egalitarianism is well in line with what has been proposed more generally for egalitarian societies as culturally unprepared for inequality (Brunton 1989). It would appear that by finally discarding this argument, Besteman, in her promised "undressing" of the Somali war, has conducted a rather pointless exercise: no bare bones are ever revealed, and one doubts whether there was even a dress to begin with.…”

mentioning

confidence: 63%

The Emperor's New Clothes Removed: A Critique of Besteman's “Violent Politics and the Politics of Violence”

Helander

1998

American Ethnologist

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mentioning

confidence: 63%

The Emperor's New Clothes Removed: A Critique of Besteman's “Violent Politics and the Politics of Violence”

Helander

1998

American Ethnologist

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“…Without formal institutions for accepting or rejecting innovations, without school‐like institutions or authorities for standardizing knowledge, where it is rude to ask questions, or to comment on others, it seems surprising that a concept such as ekila should be distributed so widely among hunter‐gatherers in central Africa. Brunton (1989) has argued that cultural continuity in egalitarian societies, such as those discussed here, is fortuitous. I shall explain why this is a mistaken assumption, and describe certain aspects of cultural reproduction in this context.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Brunton (1989) claimed that egalitarian societies are inherently unstable owing to their inability to assure cultural continuity, to judge or condemn new innovations, or to impose the reproduction of the old through institutions or authoritative individuals.…”

Section: Reproducing An Egalitarian Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ekila: blood, bodies, and egalitarian societies

Lewis

2008

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Mbendjele forest hunter‐gatherers in northern Congo refer to a confusing body of seemingly unconnected and diverse practices and beliefs as ‘ekila’. Ethnographically, ekila has many meanings. I suggest a number of possible ways to understand what connects these different practices, but argue that it is only when considering learning in this egalitarian environment that ekila really begins to make sense. The ethnography demonstrates how formulaic and counter‐intuitive explanations of specific taboos and related behaviour stimulate a learner‐motivated pedagogic process – one devoid of an individual or institutional focus – through which Mbendjele learn important knowledge. Ekila anchors key areas of cosmological knowledge, gender and political ideology in the physical and biological experiences of human growth and maturation so that gendered practices and cultural values take on a natural, inevitable quality. Résumé Les chasseurs‐cueilleurs Mbendjele des forêts du nord du Congo font référence sous le nom d’ekilaà un corpus apparemment confus de pratiques et de croyances diverses et sans rapport entre elles. Du point de vue ethnographique, l’ekila a de nombreuses significations. L'auteur suggère plusieurs manières possibles de comprendre ce qui relie ces différentes pratiques, mais avance que ce n'est qu'en considérant l'apprentissage dans cet environnement égalitaire que l’ekila commence vraiment à prendre un sens. L'ethnographie démontre comment les explications toutes faites et contre‐intuitives de certains tabous et des comportements y afférents ont suscité un processus pédagogique motivé par les destinataires de l'enseignement, vide de toute attention individuelle ou institutionnelle, par lequel les Mbendjele acquièrent des connaissances importantes. L’ekila ancre des notions essentielles de connaissances cosmologiques, de genre et d'idéologie politique dans l'expérience physique et biologique de la croissance et de la maturation humaines, de sorte que les pratiques sexuées et les valeurs culturelles prennent une qualité naturelle et inévitable.

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“…A significant topic of discussion with regard to societies where such an ethos dominates is their alleged 'cultural instability' (Brunton 1989; see also Fardon 1990), commonly theorized in terms of contradiction. The discussion, we shall see later, needs revision, yet the elements of such contradiction are clear enough.…”

Section: Egalitarianism's Contradictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The holistic person; or, the ideology of egalitarianism

Riches

2000

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Over the past decade and more, Western practices bearing on social life have been marked by a turn against Cartesian dualism. In particular, sociological analysts, political activists, and many ordinary Westerners have come increasingly to advocate an appreciation of the person in terms of the mind‐body construed as inextricably one. To account for this, comparative material from Inuit hunter‐gatherers and the Western New Age movement is brought to bear. Using this material, the holistic person is interpreted as a discourse about individual moral frailty, ideologically pertinent in societies where egalitarianism of outcome is the dominant cultural ethos. This analysis is related to Giddens’s account of ‘late modernity’, specifically as this is informed by ‘life politics’.

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The Cultural Instability of Egalitarian Societies

Cited by 31 publications

References 15 publications

The Emperor's New Clothes Removed: A Critique of Besteman's “Violent Politics and the Politics of Violence”

The Emperor's New Clothes Removed: A Critique of Besteman's “Violent Politics and the Politics of Violence”

Ekila: blood, bodies, and egalitarian societies

The holistic person; or, the ideology of egalitarianism

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