Evolution, fission, and the early state

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Book chapter

Title:	Evolution, fission, and the early state
Author:	Cohen, R.
Book title:	The Study of the State
Year:	1981
Pages:	87-115
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Northern Nigeria
Subjects:	State history traditional polities
Abstract:	Sections on the concept of sociopolitical evolution and the state as one 'level' of evolution, on conventional criteria for statehood, and on the fission/antifission criterion, are followed by a comparison of three nineteenth-century societies located along an est-west line at the southern edge of the Muslim emirates of northern Nigeria: Biu, Gulani, and Chibuk. Centralised governmental institutions are present in two (Biu and Gulani), absent in one (Chibuk). All three societies are previously uncentralised polities that have experienced similar, if not identical external pressures from large strongly organised predatory-state systems in their sociopolitical environment. All three societies had exogamous patrilineal descent groups in their non-state form. Technology, mode of production, compound organisation and settlement patterns are roughly similar. Inputs are extraordinarily similar, outputs are strikely different; even the two statelike developments are quite distinctively different. The comparison of Biu, Gulani, and Chibuk leads to a number of conclusions of importance to theories of the early state and demonstrates the utility of the fission/antifission criterion. Fig., notes, ref.