ANTH 010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Centralized Government, Ethnocide, Godparent
13 Aug 2020
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Harris believes in a big men theory, that big men began to develop which led to more hierarchical societies. People would become big men by throwing big feasts. Big men competed for their spot with other men of the society and competition began to be important in society. Harris assumes that people have a innate drive for status. The big men had to do all of the work themselves at first. Harris argues the function of big men was from the feasts that created redistributive exchange. Once food was able to be stored, big men developed ways of gather resources from others such as taxes, labor, food, etc. From the big men theory, ranked societies immerged. The text makes no argument for how change happened. People began inheriting power and the idea of the king and hierarchy immerged. Simple societies mostly have kin relationships, but also some have other ties that extend beyond the relationship of kin.
