Glossary
Affinal: family relationships created through marriage.
Age grades: groups of men who are close to one another in age and share similar duties or responsibilities.
Age sets: named categories to which men of a certain age are assigned at birth.
Band: the smallest unit of political organization, consisting of only a few families and no formal leader- ship positions.
Big man: a form of temporary or situational leadership; influence results from acquiring followers. Bilateral cross-cousin marriage: a man marries a woman who is both his mother’s brother’s daughter and his father’s sister’s daughter.
Bilateral descent: kinship (family) systems that recognize both the mother’s and the father’s “sides” of the family.
Caste system: the division of society into hierarchical levels; one’s position is determined by birth and remains fixed for life.
Chiefdom: large political units in which the chief, who usually is determined by heredity, holds a formal position of power.
Circumscription: the enclosure of an area by a geographic feature such as mountain ranges or desert or by the boundaries of a state.
Codified law: formal legal systems in which damages, crimes, remedies, and punishments are specified. Egalitarian: societies in which there is no great difference in status or power between individuals and there are as many valued status positions in the societies as there are persons able to fill them.
Feuds: disputes of long duration characterized by a state of recurring hostilities between families, lineages, or other kin groups.
Ideologies: ideas designed to reinforce the right of power holders to rule.
Legitimacy: the perception that an individual has a valid right to leadership.
Lineage: individuals who can trace or demonstrate their descent through a line of males or females back to a founding ancestor.
Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage: a man marries a woman who is his mother’s brother’s daughter. Matrilineal: kinship (family) systems that recognize only relatives through a line of female ancestors. Nation: an ethnic population.
Negative reinforcements: punishments for noncompliance through fines, imprisonment, and death sentences.
Oaths: the practice of calling on a deity to bear witness to the truth of what one says.
Ordeal: a test used to determine guilt or innocence by submitting the accused to dangerous, painful, or risky tests believed to be controlled by supernatural forces.
Patrilineal: kinship (family) systems that recognize only relatives through a line of male ancestors.
Peasants: residents of a state who earn a living through farming.
Poro and sande: secret societies for men and women, respectively, found in the Mande-speaking peoples of West Africa, particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, and Guinea.
Positive reinforcements: rewards for compliance; examples include medals, financial incentives, and other forms of public recognition.
Proletarianization: a process through which farmers are removed from the land and forced to take wage labor employment.
Raids: short-term uses of physical force organized and planned to achieve a limited objective.
Ranked: societies in which there are substantial differences in the wealth and social status of individuals; there are a limited number of positions of power or status, and only a few can occupy them.
Restricted exchange: a marriage system in which only two extended families can engage in this exchange.
Reverse dominance: societies in which people reject attempts by any individual to exercise power. Segmentary lineage: a hierarchy of lineages that contains both close and relatively distant family members.
Social classes: the division of society into groups based on wealth and status.
Sodality: a system used to encourage solidarity or feelings of connectedness between people who are not related by family ties.
State: the most complex form of political organization characterized by a central government that has a monopoly over legitimate uses of physical force, a sizable bureaucracy, a system of formal laws, and a standing military force.
Stratified: societies in which there are large differences in the wealth, status, and power of individuals based on unequal access to resources and positions of power.
Sumptuary rules: norms that permit persons of higher rank to enjoy greater social status by wearing distinctive clothing, jewelry, and/or decorations denied those of lower rank.
Tribe: political units organized around family ties that have fluid or shifting systems of temporary leadership.
Unilineal descent: kinship (family) systems that recognize only one sex-based “side” of the family.
