Indigenous Political Systems Research Articles

Decoy politics: How settler states deflect Indigenous threats

Anglo settler states like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States were built through the dispossession of Indigenous lands and through the disruption of Indigenous political, social and economic systems. Over time, however, Indigenous nations have challenged the unjust foundations of these states, forcing settler states to respond with repression but also with accommodation, especially in the face of successful Indigenous mobilization. Yet even during these moments, state actors have resisted changes to state sovereignty, sometimes by creating new institutions that seem responsive, but which simply reinforce the status quo. To make sense of these moments, we introduce the concept of “decoy politics” and develop a theory for why states might turn to decoy politics, with a particular focus on Canada. Our findings suggest decoy politics may help explain why reconciliation with Indigenous nations remains difficult despite seemingly genuine attempts at meaningful institutional and policy change.

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

Autochthonous Politics and Capitalist Development in Thailand

Autochthonous politics is defined as indigenous-developed politics. Adherence to autochthonous politics allows for the gradual evolution of indigenous political regimes in the face of foreign alternatives. Autochthonous politics is said to exist when indigenous political systems are not displaced by foreign political systems over time. Successful autochthonous power systems often revolve around a central political figure like a monarch or a dictator who maintains a stranglehold over the entire regime through a network of loyal sycophants and supplicants. The monarch or dictator retains central control over political power through legal and extra-legal means. The clearest example from European history was Louis XV. The Sun King or le roi soleil, meant when he said “l’etat cest moi” or “I am the state”. The singular repsentation of a political demi-god derives legitimacy from mysterious universal sources. In the case of Thailand, the powerful Siamese monarchs sat on their thrones above heaven, earth and all men. All beings paid homage to the great and absolute power of the autochthonous monarch. The summative power of the monarch was made all the more powerful because of the grand narratives that surround the mystery and spirituality of the King of Kings1.

Bolivia’s New Constitution: Towards Participatory Democracy and Political Pluralism?

In Bolivia, rights to increased political participation and the recognition of indigenous political systems are interrelated. The new constitution of 2009, a prime example of the “new Andean constitutionalism,” defines Bolivia as a representative, participatory and communitarian democracy. It incorporates enhanced mechanisms and institutions for participatory democracy. Moreover, new social rights have been anchored in the constitution and a plurinational state is supposed to be constructed. The article raises the question of whether the new constitution will change the relations between state and civil society considerably and whether a new democratic model is being established in Bolivia. I argue that there are many limiting factors when it comes to putting the emancipatory elements of the constitution into practice. These include the increased strength of the executive branch, the intent of the government to co‐opt civil society organizations and to exclude dissident views, the resistance of the conservative opposition to loosing some of its privileges, the deep-rooted social inequality, the social conflicts and polarization, the resource dependence of the current economic model, and the authoritarian characteristics of indigenous self-governance structures. The article demonstrates that the new Bolivian constitution cannot create a new society but that the processes around the elaboration of a new basic law have contributed to considerable changes in the social, political and symbolic order.

Change and continuity in native political systems: The case of the Denkyira state

Using Denkyira (an Akan tribal group in Ghana) as case study, the paper analyses the emergence, subsistence and declivity of indigenous political systems in post-colonial Africa. It argues that whilst there has been continuity in the cherished values of democracy and development, there has been a change in the political and social institutions for their realization. And colonialism bears a heavy, though far from exclusive, responsibility. The introduction of English-style political system during the era of colonialism systematically destabilized the once-thriving native political system of Denkyira. The paper draws the pessimistic prognosis that a further atrophy of the native political system is probable, due to globalization and the resultant modernizing and democratizing proclivities, creating the ground for full-grown English-style political system

Change And Continuity In Native Political Systems: The Case Of The Denkyira State

Using Denkyira (an Akan tribal group in Ghana) as case study, the paper analyses the emergence, subsistence and declivity of indigenous political systems in post-colonial Africa. It argues that whilst there has been continuity in the cherished values of democracy and development, there has been a change in the political and social institutions for their realization. And colonialism bears a heavy, though far from exclusive, responsibility. The introduction of English-style political system during the era of colonialism systematically destabilized the once-thriving native political system of Denkyira. The paper draws the pessimistic prognosis that a further atrophy of the native political system is probable, due to globalization and the resultant modernizing and democratizing proclivities, creating the ground for full-grown English-style political system Journal of Philosophy and Culture Vol. 3 (1) 2006: pp. 129-152

Introduction to special issue on indigenous entrepreneurs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce the content of a special issue of Journal of Enterprising Communities focusing on indigenous entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides a brief description of the six contributions to the special issue.FindingsThe papers are found to range over New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, Sweden Samoa and Ghana.Originality/valueThe papers comprising this special issue are of value in increasing understanding of how uniquely indigenous political, economic and social systems can explain cultural, social and political factors that both inhibit and enhance indigenous economic prosperity.

Britain's Native Agents in Arabia and Persia in the Nineteenth Century

This paper examines British imperial involvement in the Gulf region. It analyzes the infrastructure that enabled Britain’s Political Resident in the Gulf and his small cadre of British officers to manage political relations with dozens of rulers and governors in Eastern Arabia and Southern Persia, to maintain the Pax Britannica on the waters of the Gulf, and to protect British interests throughout the region. This analysis reveals a significant difference between the traditional view of Britain’s informal empire in the Gulf and the reality of how it actually functioned during the nineteenth century. The secret to the Gulf Residency’s effectiveness was the extent to which its infrastructure worked within the indigenous political systems of the Gulf. Arab rulers in need of protection collaborated with the Resident to maintain the Pax Britannica, while influential men from affluent Arab, Persian, and Indian merchant families served as the Resident’s “native agents” in over half of the political posts within the Gulf Residency. The result was a collaborative power triangle between the Resident, his native agents, and the rulers that sustained Britain’s informal empire in the Gulf during the nineteenth century. This paper employs a neutral definition of collaboration: either ‘working with another’ in the case of ruler‐Resident and ruler‐agent relations, or ‘working for another’ in the case of agent‐Resident relations. 2 Examining two of the three sets of relations within this collaborative triangle — those of agent‐Resident and agent‐ruler — the paper shows how the Resident was able to effectively employ affluent Gulf merchants as his political agents throughout the region. Table 1 illustrates how extensive Britain’s employment of native agents was: Table 1: Britain’s native agents in Arabia and Persia

Conflict, Justice, and the Stranger-King Indigenous Roots of Colonial Rule in Indonesia and Elsewhere

Historians of Indonesia often think of states, and especially colonial states, as predatory institutions encroaching aggressively on the territory and autonomy of freedom-loving stateless peoples. For Barbara and Leonard Andaya, early European expansion in Sumatra and the Moluccas was synonymous with the distortion or destruction of decentralized indigenous political systems based on cooperation, alliance, economic complementarity, and myths of common ancestry (B. W. Andaya 1993; L. Y. Andaya 1993). Anthony Reid (1997: 81) has described tribal societies like those of the Batak and Minangkabau in highland Sumatra as ‘miracles of statelessness’ which ‘defended their autonomy by a mixture of guerilla warfare, diplomatic flexibility, and deliberate exaggeration of myths about their savagery’ until ultimately overwhelmed by Dutch military power. Before colonialism, in this view, most Indonesians relied for security not on the protection of a powerful king, but on a ‘complex web of contractual mutualities’ embodying a ‘robust pluralism’ (Reid 1998: 29, 32). ‘So persistently’, concludes Reid (1997: 80-1), ‘has each step towards stronger states in the archipelago arisen from trading ports, with external aid and inspiration, that one is inclined to seek the indigenous political dynamic in a genius for managing without states’. Henk Schulte Nordholt (2002: 54), for his part, cautions against any tendency to downplay the violent, repressive aspects of colonial and post-colonial government in Indonesia, expressing the hope that ‘a new Indonesian historiography will succeed in liberating itself from the interests, perspective, and conceptual framework of the state’. An even more systematic attempt to demonize the (modern) state in Indonesia and elsewhere can be found in the work of James Scott (1998a, 1998b).

Orphans as a window on the AIDS epidemic in sub-saharan Africa: Initial results and implications of a study in Uganda

Provisional estimates from a Save the Children Fund enumeration study in four Ugandan districts indicate that the total number of orphans (one or both parents missing) ranges between 620,000 and 1,200,000. Needs assessments with guardians and local administrators show that although extended family networks are absorbing these children according to traditional rules, they may be vulnerable to increased mortality due to economic and health stresses on their caretakers, many of whom are elderly persons. The orphan burden will increase in Uganda and other Sub-Saharan African countries over the next few years. Allocation of additional national and international resources must be considered to avert breakdowns in community and familial support systems and consequent increases in under 5 mortality. The orphan burden is a window on the potential for massive social breakdown and dislocation in Sub-Saharan Africa resulting from high AIDS-related mortality. Methodologies for data collection and planning that use indigenous political systems must be built quickly to avert disaster.

Islam and Malay kingship

Islam is often seen as playing only a minor role in pre-colonial Malay political life. J. M. Gullick, for instance, in his seminal work Indigenous political systems of Western Malaya concludes that Islam “was not to any significant extent a ‘state religion’”. The “chaplains of the more devout Sultans and chiefs”, he explains, “never attained any collective importance in the political system owing to the lack of organization”; there were “no Kathis (Muslim judges and registrars) until the era of British protection”; and no evidence exists that “Islamic legal doctrine” was “effective law”?

Cognatic descent and the generation of social stratification in Southeast Asia

Anthropologists and other social scientists have long been fascinated by the intricacies of Indian culture and society. Consequently it seems surprising that they have given relatively little attention to the tradi tional states of South-East Asia which, with the exception of Viet Nam, maintained and developed an essentially Indian cultural tradition albeit in a very different setting. In this paper I discuss a number of issues concerning the significance of the regulation of rights in women for political organization and the development of social stratification. Recent contributions to the his torical record of nineteenth century Siam now make such an exercise productive for that country and provide a basis for comparison with the Malay states, primarily as they are described and analysed in J. M. Gullick's Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya (1958). Merely to illustrate the importance of descent and marriage rules in structuring political relations is to ignore the more fundamental problem with respect to the control of women of the nature of the relationship between the spheres of kinship and marriage on the one hand and the political order on the other. Indeed, Georges Balandier's assessment of the study of segmentary societies, that Power and 'kin ship' are in dialectical relation, hence the failure of any unilateral interpretation (1972: 77) provides a useful perspective for the analysis of South-East Asian states with their very different descent and political structures.

New Coalitions and traditional chieftainship in Northern Zambia: The Politics of Local government in Uyombe

Opening ParagraphThe imposition of British colonial rule brought rural societies in Zambia to the crossroads of traditional and bureaucratic administration. Indigenous forms of government mediated central government institutions and regulated administrative changes. The majority of rural Africans were governed by composite structures. They were under a bureaucratic system but not part of it. The colonial form of local government, the Native Administration, was not a bureaucracy, though it may be considered a formal organization, in that ‘collective efforts were explicitly organized for specific ends’ (Blau and Scott, 1962: 223). Under colonial rule the principal ends were to maintain law and order and to collect taxes from the African majority. The indigenous political systems were left largely intact, and thus, politics was an intimate part of local government. This paper looks at one of these local systems of government and deals with its development and transformation through a number of phases, focusing primarily on the transitional period at the end of colonial rule (the late 1950s and the early 1960s) and the beginning of Zambian independence and on the persistence of traditional chieftainship as the basis of local government through the process of political change.

Book Review: Far East: Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Book Review: Far East: Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Islam, History, and Politics

It is not, I imagine, necessary to argue in this Journal (whose birth I welcome) that the study of African politics should never be separated from the study of African history. There was a time when the political institutions of African states (except in a few special cases, such as Ethiopia) meant ‘colonial political institutions, together with such indigenous African institutions as had been permitted to survive within the colonial framework’. For students of colonial government the study of African history had no obvious relevance. For those who wished to explain such institutions as Legislative Councils in British-controlled territories, Communes Mixtes in French-controlled territories, or the Conseil de Gouvernement in the Belgian Congo, the history of the European state which had imposed the institution was understandably more significant than the histories of the African peoples upon whom it had been imposed. As for such indigenous African political systems as had survived, in a modified form, within the colonial administrative structure, their study was—by a kind of unwritten convention—left to the social anthropologists, whose historical interests varied according to the character of the system and the approach of the anthropologist.

J. M. Gullick: Indigenous political systems of western Malaya. (London School of Economics. Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 17.) vii, 151 pp. London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1958. 25s.

J. M. Gullick: Indigenous political systems of western Malaya. (London School of Economics. Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 17.) vii, 151 pp. London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1958. 25s. - Volume 22 Issue 3

: Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya . J. M. Gullick.

American AnthropologistVolume 61, Issue 4 p. 704-705 Free Access ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY: Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya. J. M. GULLICK ROBERT A. HACKENBERG, ROBERT A. HACKENBERG University of ArizonaSearch for more papers by this author ROBERT A. HACKENBERG, ROBERT A. HACKENBERG University of ArizonaSearch for more papers by this author First published: August 1959 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1959.61.4.02a00330AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume61, Issue4August 1959Pages 704-705 RelatedInformation

Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya

Tribal Rule and Modern Politics in Northern Rhodesia

endeavour dug the past 30 years to build up an efficient system of African local government. It has clearly been based, with very few exceptions, on indigenous political systems; we have been endeavouring to adapt the old to the new and not to substitute the new for the old. This important point is brought home very forcibly when a window on other territones is opened on occasions like conferences on local government. There one leams that in many parts of Africa either the traditional Chiefs have some time ago taken a back seat or in many cases traditional institlltions such as we have known in Northem Rhodesia have hardly existed at all. I rnake no bones about the stress that we lay on chieftainship, because in the great majority of cases in African political systems it is the Chief who is the keystone of the local government arch. I have spent rising 29 years in this territory and I have been privileged to serve in all its provinces. I have met and known men who have looked every inch Paramount Chiefs or Senior Chiefs of their tribes. Aere have been many others who have impressed those who know them with their ability, personality, integrity, and in some cases solid determination to rule their countries wisely and well in what have been difficult times. I would be the first to admit that there are at the same time a number of Chiefs whose performance administratively is indifferent and that there are others whose administration of their areas is lacking in efficiency, or who are so conservative in their outlook that genuine progress is not easily understood by them. But the point is that in all cases the Chiefs are respected because they are the traditional leaders of the tribe. The Chief is the most important man in his country. His power and influence is derived from the fact that he is as it were the anointed head of his people. He is the man whose election to the chieftainship had the full support of his subjects and who has later been recognised by the Government as Chief of the area. He has administrative and judicial functions, but at least of equal importance is the spiritual relationship whereby the Chief is seen through the eyes of his people to be the intermediary between them and their ancestors. Izhe Chief, in most cases in this territory, is the man who has gone through the customar,r initiation ceremony, which is the overture to the assumption of the Chieftainship. It is he who is the guardian of the relics, the arcana