Lesson 7

• Politics refers to activities through which people make, preserve, and amend the general rule under which they live
• Power the ability to do something in order to achieve a desired outcomes
• Authority is legitimate power, where in the persons who has the right to exercise power
• Aspects in maintaining social order:

  1. Creating formal norms

  • constitutional laws
  • statutory laws
  • common laws

  2. Applying sanctions

  3. Settling disputes among individuals

  4. Settling disputes between/among nations
• Band is usually a very small, oftentimes nomadic group that is connected by family ties and is politically independent.
• Nomadic means moving from place to place, usually in search for food.

  Bands are most hunter-gatherer.
• Nomadic - due to their small size and their tendency to move around, band usually have little to no formal leadership
• Bands are usually referred as being egalitarian societies, in which all persons of the same age and gender are seen as equals.
• Tribes is a combination of smaller kin or non-kin groups, linked by a common culture, that usually act as one.
• Tribe - similar to bands, it have no formal leadership, instead they are egalitarian in nature
• Chiefdoms - a political unit headed by a chief who holds power over more than one community group. It is usually more densely populated and are not egalitarian but instead have social rank, with the chief and his family holding power.
• Since the Chiefs are usually chosen by heredity, this usually gives his family and their inner circle
• Many chiefs practice redistribution, in which goods are accumulated by one central person or power, who then decide to allocate them among the people.
• Many chiefdoms believe their chiefs are endowed with mana, a supernatural power that gives the right to rule.

  Despite the powerful force, chiefdoms usually have no form of bureaucracy or written laws that help support the chief.
• A nation consist of distinct population of people bound together by a common culture, history, and tradition who are typically concentrated within specific geographic regions.
• A state is a political unit that has sovereignty the legitimate and ultimate authority of the state over an area of territory and the people within it.
• The two aspect of NATION

  • Cultural Community
  • Political Community
• Not all nations are recognized as states

  Likewise, a state is not equivalent to a single nation and may in fact be composed of several nations.
• A state is a political unit that encompasses several communities has bureaucracy, and has leaders that possess legitimate powers.
• Leaders of states have more responsibilities such as the maintenance of law and order, securing the state territory, engaging in international relations, and preserving social control.
• Legitimacy and types of authority

  • legitimacy originated from the Latin word legitimare, meaning "to declare lawful", and is broadly defined as rightfulness
  • it confers on an order or command an authoritative or binding character, thus transforming power into authority.
  • Max Weber studied the transformation of societies and observed that the bases of legitimacy of rule vary in different type of societies.