Urban Genesis at Chaco: Preface, Index

URBAN GENESIS AT CHACO: Case Study of the Origin of Civilizations Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

1.4 The Challange for Statecraft

Cultures may be infinite in variety, but there seem to be a limited number ways that power within a culture can be structured. Any power system must be effective, efficient, justifiable, and supportable within its context. In fact, statecraft can be assessed as a set of solutions to social problems. The following is a summary list of the main problems which any power-structure must address.

The Problem of Interpersonal Violence.

Domestic abusers, feuding families, and highway bandits all commit forms of interpersonal violence distinct from socially-orchestrated warfare. The fear of interpersonal violence is a strong motive for changes in beliefs and behavior, including submission to authority in exchange for protection. Governments typically suppress interpersonal violence with some form of police.

Among the Historic Pueblo tribes, anonymous societies (koshare) acted as police in a most unusual fashion described by Adolph Bandelier (1891). Most ethnographers translated the term koshare as 'clown society;' Bandelier called them 'the delight makers'.

The Problem of Crime: Theft, Fraud, Interpersonal Conflict.

In small, non-state societies, tribal elders often mediated conflicts. Society-wide governments, which are inherently anonymous, compensate by consistent, impartial enforcement of explicit laws. This is the basis of jurisprudence. Iimpartiality, consistency, and enforceability continue to be three of the most important criteria legal thinkers use to test the viability of a law.

Many societies also offer extraordinary means of redress for grievances. Louis XIV allowed commoners into Versailles to petition for relief or redress. A clerk followed the King as he listened to each case, and followed up on it. Even if only a tiny fraction of problematic cases were heard and acted upon, the public awareness that this method existed was tremendous propaganda in favor of the monarchy.

The Problem of Envy.

Inequity can be measured in terms of access to mates, to food, to preferred space, to services, to prestige goods, to information, and to the opportunity to gain even more of these items. Unequal access to some or all of these items is the basis of class stratification. Morgan, Marx, and Engels assumed that the organized system of repressive violence used to defend inequality is the origin of the state; Bakunin (1871), Kropotkin (1888), and Lenin went further in asserting that this organized system of violence is the state.

In practice the issue has proven to be more complex. Violence used to protect private property is often condoned by members of a community who are quite poor. In essence, disadvantaged community members want to maintain the system of property-protection out of enlightened self-interest, even if it means protecting the interests of elites who are exploiting them. As long as the system protects poor and rich alike, the poor--who are also the most vulnerable--prefer the protections of an impartial system even as it protects inequity.

However, refutation of the Communist model does not solve the very real problem of envy as a cause of social conflict. Some form of justification must be given, and accepted, for inequity to persist. Both the privileged and the disadvantaged members of the society must believe, each in their own way, that the privileged ones deserve more mates, better food, spacious houses, jewels, et cetera.

The Problems of External Risk.

Foreign invasion, droughts, floods, fires, storms, epidemics, famine, and misfortune are the traditional disasters from which people sought protection. These remain as lessened dangers, but to them we now add pollution, climate change, nuclear war, and economic instability. Awareness of external risk causes persistent anxiety; this can also be an effective motive for changing belief and behavior.

Governments offer mitigation or protection from these external threats. Only society-wide authority can organize and mobilize human and material resources on a scale large enough to build dams, and fortifications. Labor-intensive monuments serve as constant reminders of this inherent advantage to large-scale organization. If the leader is believed to be sacred, that leader may offer supernatural protection from risks that seem beyond human control.

Secondly,

Regional authorities can also compensate for misfortune through redistribution. Systems of redistribution are still used to compensate for misfortune, chronic poverty, and large-scale disasters. Charity is also used to enhance the prestige of the elite. Kwakiutl chieftains gave potlatches, Italian aristocrats patronized the arts and crafts, American billionaires give endowments.

The Problem of Engagement.

Or, 'Why should we submit to this form of authority?' Governments must answer this question effectively and persistently or the state will fragment. Typically, the response is a complex blend of promises to address the other problems listed here, and threats against refusal to submit. The least costly means of engagement are the most efficient, a point emphasized by Machiavelli (1495). Rule by fear can work, but voluntary compliance requires fewer security forces.

Beyond voluntary compliance there is an even deeper level of engagement: active support of the state and its institutions. Generally this is achieved if the members of the society feel some degree of personal investment in the state institutions, a feeling of enfranchisement. Election of the leadership by secret ballot is an obvious method of engagement; underwriting 30-year home loans is a more subtle and method of binding the individual to the institutions of family and bank, and giving them a sense of social investment as an 'owner.'

A more ancient form of engagement is group ritual. Greek plays, Roman and Mayan games, religious processions, and Military parades all served the institutions of state by gathering the public together for a shared experience. Most governments learn the hard way that a public gathering can turn into a threatening, anti-government mob. But early governments were often regarded as sacred. Hence, the rulers could not imagine such a thing as a popular uprising and did not fear it. Theocracies therefore used group rituals very effectively to create and maintain a common sense of community and society.

The Problem of Consensus-Building and Maintenance.

How do you get all of the members of a society to accept a new system of authority? Even if a leadership promises to address all of the problems listed above, it may fail to convince a society or be crippled by conflicting demands to address problems with limited resources and time. Working backward through time, these are a few of the successful solutions:

1. The Stated Promise. The U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights is a superb example. As a test of its effectiveness, note that the most divergent political positions within the United States all agree with the ideals, objectives, and principles in these documents. Virtually all disagreement within the country is whether the government has delivered, or will deliver this promise.

This solution is most effective in unifying a society under an agreed-upon set of objectives. Anyone can be a full member with full rights so long as they pledge loyalty to the Constitution and its ideals. This is an exceptionally effective means of engagement. Presumably it is most vulnerable if a significant portion of the population rejects those objectives, and therefore Constitutionalists take great care in trying to draft a document which can endure as a common denominator. Even so, it allows little room for serious dissent.

2. The Ethnic Nation. Fascism is the notorious extreme example, but in fact most nations today are based at least partly on this idea. Consider France, Turkey, Japan, Senegal. Nationalism is less vulnerable to political dissent than Constitutionalism because it is not defined by specific ideals or objectives. Identity with the state is strongly established because the state identifies with its members, regardless of individual opinions. Conversely, Nation-States cannot expand by incorporation, unless provision is made for assimilating aliens into the national unity.

3. The Popular Monarch. Subjects of a monarch can disagree widely in their beliefs and goals and still regard each other as members of a unified community so long as they all submit to, and identify with, the authority of a single individual.

Monarchies are more flexible than either Constitutional States or Nation-States, because subjects do not have to be of one ethnicity nor do they need to agree on common principles and ideals. They do not even have to speak the same language or practice the same religion. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of unifying strength and allegiance: the people of Aquitaine would submit as easily to an English-speaking monarch as a French one.

4. The Common Religion. This may be the earliest form of consensus-making. Fustel de Coulanges (1868) argued that ancient families worshipped their own ancestors on their own land. Other families worshipped their own ancestors, so family-based religion was inherently mutually exclusive. Ancestor-worship could be expanded to clan- or even tribe-scale religion, but it could not include people who had no demonstrable (or fictional) blood relationship. The necessary step is to establish a form of religion based on an externality: the earth, immortal beings, or the creator of all existence. Any individual or group could adopt the common religion, making it possible to expand the self-identified members of this community indefinitely.

Unique Advantages the State Can Offer

Political authorities can do more than address chronic social problems.

The Appeal of Charisma

The Appeal of Drama and Glamour

State systems can gather resources and produce tremendous pageantry. They can build plazas, temples, and processional avenues as settings for the pageants. They can extend design control over an entire region, and employ divine privilege or expropriation to reshape even built-up areas. They can declare holidays and define sacred time for an entire society. Such actions can awe, intimidate, and otherwise impress individuals profoundly, and promote the desire of the individual to identify with the state.
Such actions also produce very distinctive material remains. This will be addressed in Chapters 5 and 6.

The Appeal of Myth and Vision

Why are we here and where are we going? Leaders have raised these questions and responded to them in numerous ways from the most literal to the most metaphoric. Much of literature, in fact the creation and retelling of history by different cultures is a process of inculcating and propagandizing myths and a sense of common social purpose. The process is best illustrated by its failure: Southern Americans do not accept the myth of the Civil War, which Southerners call the War Between the States. First, they regard it as an invasion of a sovereign country that was created by popular vote. Secondly, Southerners believe the primary motives for this invasion and annexation were tactical (to thwart the British) and economic. Northerners flinch at the thought of the Civil War as an invasion, conquest, and forcible annexation of a sovereign country. And they are generally taken aback by the challenge to the assumption that the war was fought for any other reason than to Free the Slaves. Your reaction to this passage is a good test of the power and effectiveness of State myth.