D’accord — on y va.

In school, I took a course with anthropologist Pierre-Yves Jacopin that left a strong impression on me. Professor Jacopin’s specialty was the study of small-scale egalitarian societies. He’d studied with both Claude Levy-Strauss and Jean Piaget, thus getting in on the first, if not the ground, floor of Structuralism – so that’s a context in which to place him, if that’s helpful. For his doctorate, Jacopin spent 10 years in the Amazon studying a tribe called the Yukuna.

I’ll stop here to beg your forgiveness — and Professor Jacopin’s — if I’ve not remembered what follows correctly. It was many years ago that I took his class.

At any rate, I remember that Jacopin asserted that the Yukuna constituted an egalitarian society because “They have division of task, but not division of labor.” I questioned him further, and he explained that it was not that no one was in charge, but rather that hierarchy in the community was temporary: when certain needs arose, the community reorganized itself around those who had the skills to address them. I pressed him further, and he allowed that, yes, they did have someone in the role as “chief” or “president” or “le grand fromage” — as you’d have it — but again he maintained that being the chief was simply a skill, and one that also diminished in importance as soon as a community need which no longer needed “chief-i-ness” (certainly not his word!) arose.

I’ve also recently encountered this model of organization again, as described by ethnographer/folklorist Henry Glassie, in his book Material Culture (1999). Talking about the process of building a house in the small community of Ballymenone in Northern Ireland:

“During interaction, people are assigned roles — in one moment obliged to follow, in another obliged to lead. While the walls of his house are rising, Paddy McBrien is one of the crew, a follower. But when the storm clouds gather and the hay lies on the spread, Paddy, renowned as an agricultural expert, steps into the lead. His neighbors submit to his direction and form a single force.” (p. 252)

I’m wondering first, what you think of the validity of the model I’m offering. If you do find it interesting, how might you go about mapping it? You have allowed for “lateral ties/power with” relationships in your diagram, but you’ve got no method of representing the temporality inherent in my model. Perhaps, normalizing over time, you’d consider this organization to be a bit more akin to the one you’re proposing…though I do wonder about size as a factor.

So, with regard to size, “small” for Jacopin meant a number between 30 and 120 members, roughly. Also, note that “societies” meant for him a unique linguistic group with its own customs and rituals.

Also, Ballymenone — where Glassie’s field work was conducted – is in County Fermanagh, and in quick Googling, I found 1991 population figures for the county: 50,250 within 656 sq mi (see the entry for Fermanagh in the Questia Free Encyclopedia). So, not what you’d call a dense population. A review of Glassie’s initial book on the his work in Ballymenone claims that the actual community Glassie studied included 129 people in 42 households…

So…size…I’m back to that quote I can’t source about democracies being effective for societies small enough that they could all sit with their back around one tree…which doesn’t quite describe the Yukuna or Ballymenone…

Alright – those are my first thoughts. Now I guess I’d better go read the rest of what you’ve written…