Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
When the population grows, the average familial distance between individuals
increases. Consequently, the familial conflict resolution process fails to prevent
fights. Moreover, reaching consensus on decision making and resource manage-
ment becomes harder with numerous inhabitants. These limitations trigger the
social transition from tribe to chiefdom.
Chiefdoms are groups up to thousands of individuals directed by a leader or
a family of leaders. Leaders control power and information. Thus, this organiza-
tion solves the scaling issue of the tribal consensual decision making. Moreover,
leaders centralize and redistributes resources via a taxation system. This system
allows leaders to feed specialists. These specialists can produce luxury goods for
leader (inducing a cost of resource) but also control the population (policemen)
preventing fights between unrelated individuals.
At the chiefdom stage, the management of critical information and decision
making is made only by leaders. When the society grows (above 50
.
000 indi-
viduals), leaders become overwhelmed by information and decisions. They have
to delegate a part of their power to subordinates. But, without tight control,
subordinates tend to take over the leader.
To prevent this situation, the propagation of cultural values (e.g. law, norm,
religion) that supports the leaders and their system have been proven success-
ful. Such a culture generally contains rules and processes and decision and some
ideology grouping members of the society within a moral circle. Thus, instead
of obeying a leader, individuals act according to rules (decentralizing the deci-
sion process) for to defend the values carried on by the ideology. This culture is
indirectly spread amongst the population via what we call Cultural Harmoniz-
ers (
CHs
) whose activity implies spreading the culture (e.g. priests, professors,
itinerant storytellers). A society maintaining a strong culture with
CHs
is at the
state level.
Table 1 provides a summary of the observed specificities for each social stage.
Tabl e 1.
Social patterns generally observed for each social stage (based on Diamond's
theory [3])
Tribe
Chiefdom
State
Number of people
Hundreds
Thousands
Over 50.000
Settlement pattern
1 village
1+ villages
Many villages
Decision making
“Egalitarian”
Centralized
Centralized
Leadership
Big man
Hereditary
Organizational role
Force and information monopoly
No
Yes
Yes
Conflict resolution
Informal
Centralized
Law, judges
Exchange
Reciprocal Redistributive (tribute) Redistributive (taxes)
Indigenous Literacy
No
No
Yes
Each stage is the consequence of the emergence of a new organization: a police
at the chiefdom stage and a
CH
organization at the nation stage. Thus, these
theories propose a framework that matches the purpose of our methodology.
