Abstract
In order to be sustainable, larger-scale social systems require containing nepotistic tendencies, which are potentially disruptive in multiple domains of social activities. Many formal institutions of our modern democratic states seem to facilitate such offsetting. The ethnographic records provide many examples of large tribes not relying on either formal institutional frameworks or strict hierarchies to articulate the diverging requirements of kin-group allegiance and broader social affiliations. How does greater social complexity emerge in such decentralized societies? Among the different informal solutions presented in the literature, we find an interesting one: age-set systems, which involve the grouping of coevals in cross-kin associations. An essential aspect of such systems is their ability to enable the swift neutralizing of the basic pull of nepotism without intensive investments in a formal institutional apparatus, as is observed in more complex and modern social systems. When great benefits can be obtained through social exchange in large cooperative networks, an age-based organization helps counter familistic preferences by creating new incentive structures.
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