Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Relationship between Social Anthropology and Political Science

Political science developed to investigate particular domain of human behavior. It also works mainly in modern nations. In small-scale societies where social anthropology grew up, politics generally do not stand out as distinct activities to separate analysis, as they do in modern society. Rather they are submerged or embedded in the general social order. There is no formal authority figure. People generally follow orders of their kin rather than formal leaders. Studying political organizations cross-culturally, anthropologists find out a wide range of various political and legal systems. It is found that legal codes along with ideas of crime and punishment, means of resolving conflicts vary substantially from culture to culture.
In this way, political anthropology, a late specialization of anthropological research, attempts to transcend particular political experiences and doctrines. It studies man as homo politicus and seeks properties common to all political organizations in all historical and geographical diversity (George Balandier 1967: 1). It studies various institutions and practices that constitute the government of men and the systems of thought and the symbols on which they are based. Thus, political anthropology is seen as a discipline concerned with 'archaic' societies in which the state is not clearly constituted and societies in which the state exists and takes on a wide variety of forms. It confronts the problem of the state's origin and earliest forms. It also confronts the problem of segmentary societies without a centralized political power. In this way, political science, the discipline which is mainly concerned with the political sphere of modern nation differs from social anthropology.

Source:  http://www.civilserviceindia.com/subject/Anthropology/notes/relationships-with-other-disciplines.html

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