The Segmentary State in Africa and Asia

Abstract

Segmentary state was the concept coined to fit Alur society into the theory of political anthropology of the 1940s. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard made the first giant step in the comparative analysis of African political systems, but supposedly centralized states and stateless segmentary lineage systems were the only ones to receive full consideration. Nadel had already distilled the voluminous Eurocentric literature on the theory and philosophy of the state, overburdened as it was with Hegelian growth, to produce a precise empirically oriented and workable definition of the state for anthropologists. Alur society did not fit or even approximate anywhere within the range of the model provided. But the model formulated in 1956 under Alur inspiration was an awkward and cumbersome derivation of Nadel's rather than a clear model in its own right. It would be simpler and better to define the segmentary state as one in which the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide. The former extends widely towards a flexible, changing periphery. The latter is confined to the central, core domain.