Society Against the State

Society Against the State
AuthorPierre Clastres
SubjectAnthropology
Published1974
Published in English
1977 (Urizen Books)

Society Against the State (French: La Société contre l'État) is a 1974 ethnography of power relations in South American rainforest native cultures written by French anthropologist Pierre Clastres and best known for its thesis that tribal societies reject the centralization of coercive power. It is considered Clastres' major work[1][2] for introducing the concept of "Society against the State".[3] In it, Clastres challenged the idea that all cultures evolve through Westernization to adopt coercive leadership, seeing this as a popular, ethnocentric myth.

Contents and publication

La Société contre l'État. Recherches d'anthropologie politique was first published by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1974.[4] When it was first translated by Urizen Books in 1977 as Society Against the State: The Leader as Servant and the Human Uses of Power Among the Indians of the Americas, however, it did not receive major attention.[5] In 1989, Zone Books republished it as Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology.[6]

It is a collection of eleven essays: "Copernicus and the Savages", "Exchange and Power: Philosophy of the Indian Chieftainship", "Independence and Exogamy", "Elements of Amerindian Demography", "The Bow and the Basket", "What Makes Indians Laugh", "The Duty to Speak", "Prophets in the Jungle", "Of the One Without the Many", "Of Torture in Primitive Societies", and the title article "Society Against the State".[7] "Exchange and Power" was originally published in the journal L'Homme in 1962.[8] In the same journal were published "Independence and Exogamy" in 1963,[9] "The Bow and the Basket" in 1966,[10] "Elements of Amerindian Demography" and "Of Torture in Primitive Societies" in 1973.[11][12] "What Makes Indians Laugh" was originally published in Les Temps modernes in 1967,[13] and "Copernicus and the Savages" was published in Critique in 1969.[11] "Prophets in the Jungle" and "Of the One Without the Many" were both published in L'Éphémère in 1969 and 1972 respectively.[11] In 1973, "The Duty to Speak" was released on Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse.[11]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Moyn 2004, p. 62.
  2. ^ Gaillard 2004, p. 311.
  3. ^ Viveiros de Castro 2010, p. 10.
  4. ^ Plot 2013, p. 67.
  5. ^ Geertz 1998, p. 72.
  6. ^ Clastres 1989.
  7. ^ Clastres 1989, "Contents".
  8. ^ Moyn 2004, p. 58.
  9. ^ Cartry 1978, p. 44.
  10. ^ Abensour 2007, p. 90.
  11. ^ a b c d Cartry 1978, p. 45.
  12. ^ Moyn 2004, p. 67.
  13. ^ Abensour 2007, p. 52.

Sources

  • Abensour, Miguel, ed. (2007). El espíritu de las leyes salvajes: Pierre Clastres o una nueva antropología política (in Spanish). Carina C. Battaglia (translator). Buenos Aires: Del Sol. ISBN 978-950-9413-08-5.
  • Cartry, Michel (1978). "Pierre Clastres (1934-1977)". Annuaire de la Ve Section de École Pratique des Hautes études. 89 (85). École pratique des hautes études: 35–45. doi:10.3406/ephe.1976.17149.
  • Clastres, Pierre (1989). Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. Robert Hurley; Abe Stein (translators). New York: Zone Books. ISBN 0-942299-01-9.
  • Gaillard, Gérald (2004). The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists (PDF). Peter James Bowman (translator). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 310–311. ISBN 0-415-22825-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 19, 2018. Retrieved April 26, 2015.
  • Geertz, Clifford (October 22, 1998). "Deep Hanging Out". The New York Review of Books. XLV (16): 69–72.
  • Moyn, Samuel (2004). "Of Savagery and Civil Society: Pierre Clastres and the Transformation of French Political Thought". Modern Intellectual History. 1: 55–80. doi:10.1017/S1479244303000076. S2CID 145643749.
  • Plot, Martín, ed. (2013). Claude Lefort: Thinker of the Political. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230375581.
  • Reghu, J. (April 14, 2019). "Gandhi as Chrysalis for a New Philosophy". The Wire.
  • Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2010). "The Untimely, Again". Archeology of Violence. Ashley Lebner (translator). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). pp. 9–52. ISBN 978-1-58435-093-4.

Further reading

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