HL INTRO Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States James C. Scott

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

Last annotated on Sunday September 24, 2017

183 Highlight(s) | 149 Note(s)

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Introduction: A Narrative in Tatters: What I Didn’t Know
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OW did Homo sapiens sapiens come, so very recently in its species history, to live in crowded, sedentary communities packed with domesticated livestock and a handful of cereal grains, governed by the ancestors of what we now call states?
Note:COME È EMERSO LO STATO?

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this template prevailed for more than six millennia
Note:SEIMILA

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agrarian, ecological complex.
Note:LO STATO... ENTITÀ AGRICOLA

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The narrative of this process has typically been told as one of progress,
Note:PROGRESSO?

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this narrative is wrong

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The founding of the earliest agrarian societies and states in Mesopotamia occurred in the latest five percent of our history
Note:5%

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fossil fuel era, beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, represents merely the last quarter of a percent
Note:0.25%

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“Anthropocene,”

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activities of humans became decisive in affecting the world’s ecosystems and atmosphere.
Note:ANTROPOCENE PAUL CRUTZEN

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when it became decisive is in dispute.

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the first nuclear tests,
Note:PROPOSTA INIZIO ANTROPOCENE

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Industrial Revolution and the massive use of fossil fuels.
Note:SECONDA PROPOSTA

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tools—for example, dynamite, bulldozers, reinforced concrete (especially for dams)—to radically alter the landscape.
Note:TERZA PROPOSTA

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Anthropocene began only a few minutes ago.
Note:SECONDO LE TRE PROP

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I suggest that we begin with the use of fire, the first great hominid tool
Note:FUOCO... PROPOSTA DEL LIBRO

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is dated at least 400,000 years ago

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long predating the appearance of Homo sapiens.

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agriculture, and pastoralism, appearing about 12,000 years ago, mark a further leap
Note:DATARE L AGRI

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AGRI... QUINTA PROP

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The other decisive premodern invention was institutional: the state. The first states in the Mesopotamian
Note:SESTA PROP.. STATO

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earlier than about 6,000 years ago,

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how we came to be sedentary, cereal-growing, livestock-rearing subjects governed
Note:COME È PERCHÈ

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the call by an earlier generation of French historians of the Annales School for a history of long-run processes (la longue durée)
Note:ANNALES

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PARADOXES OF STATE AND CIVILIZATION NARRATIVES
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unprecedented concentrations of domesticated plants, animals, and people
Note:CONCENTRAZIONE

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the state form is anything but natural or given.
Note:STATO NATURALE? NO

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Homo sapiens appeared as a subspecies about 200,000
Note:CRONOLOGIA...

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outside of Africa and the Levant no more than 60,000 years ago.

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cccccc

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sedentary communities appears roughly 12,000 years ago.
Note:SEDENTARI

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we lived in small, mobile, dispersed, relatively egalitarian, hunting-and-gathering bands.
Note:IL 95% DELLA NS STORIA

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tax-collecting, walled states pop up in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley only around 3,100
Note:TASSA... INVENZIONE RECENTISSIMA

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four millennia after the first crop domestications and sedentism.
Note:cccccc

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a problem for those theorists who would naturalize the state
Note:IL PROBLEMA DEGLI STATALISTI

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mesmerized by the narrative of progress

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Agriculture, it held, replaced the savage, wild, primitive, lawless, and violent world
Note:NARRATIVA

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the superiority of farming was underwritten by an elaborate mythology
Note:MITOLOGIA

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the sacred grain

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sedentary life itself is superior
Note:L ALTRO ASSUNTO

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fish don’t talk about water!

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massive evidence of determined resistance by mobile peoples everywhere to permanent settlement,
Note:RESISTENZA

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fought against permanent settlement, associating it, often correctly, with disease and state control.
Note:GUERRA AL CAMPO GUERRA ALLO STATO

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Native American peoples

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Sioux and Comanche becoming horseback hunters, traders, and raiders, and the Navajo becoming sheep-based pastoralists.
Note:MOBILITÀ AUMENTATA NN DIMINUITA

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From Thomas Hobbes to John Locke to Giambattista Vico to Lewis Henry Morgan to Friedrich Engels to Herbert Spencer to Oswald Spengler to social Darwinist
Note:IL MITO DEL PROGRESSO

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from households to kindreds to tribes to peoples to the state
Note:SI MIGLIORA

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Rome was the apex, with the Celts and then the Germans ranged behind.
Note:ROMA E I CELTI

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standard narrative has had to be abandoned once confronted with accumulating archaeological evidence.
Note:ARCHEOLOGIA IMBARAZZANTE

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hunters and gatherers—even today in the marginal refugia they inhabit—are nothing like the famished, one-day-away-from-starvation desperados of folklore.
Note:NOMADI E FELICI

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never looked so good—in terms of their diet, their health, and their leisure.
Note:DIETA SALUTE PIACERE

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shift from hunting and foraging to agriculture—a shift that was slow, halting, reversible, and sometimes incomplete—carried at least as many costs as benefits.
Note:COSTI E BENEFICI

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reflected in the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Note:VERITÀ EDENICA

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it has been assumed that fixed residence—sedentism—was a consequence of crop-field agriculture.
Note:FALSO ASSUNRO

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sedentism is actually quite common in ecologically rich and varied, preagricultural settings—
Note:cccccccf

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crop planting associated with mobility and dispersal except for a brief harvest period.
Note:VERO ANCHE L OPPOSTO

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There are, even today, large stands of wild wheat in Anatolia
Note:GRANO SELVATICO...I BENEFICI DELLE PIANTE NN SONO ESTRANEI AI NOMADI

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Long before the deliberate planting of seeds in ploughed fields, foragers had developed all the harvest tools,
Note:ATTREZZI

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For the layman, dropping seeds in a prepared trench or hole seems decisive.
Note:SEMINA E RACCOLTO... NON DECISIVI

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What had appeared previously to be unambiguous skeletal evidence of fully domesticated sheep and goats has also been called into question.
Note:DUBBI SULLA DOMESTICAZIONE

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identification of a single domestication event both arbitrary and pointless.
Note:NN BASTA UN EVENTO X CONVINCERE

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not entirely wild and yet not fully domesticated either.
Note:VIA DI MEZZO

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multiple, scattered domestications of most major crops (wheat, barley, rice, chick peas, lentils).
Note:FULLER SULLA PRIMA AGRICOLTURA.. PRticata dalle bande

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one can perhaps see this early period as part of a long process, still continuing, in which we humans have intervened to gain more control
Note:OBIEZIONE ALLA CONTRONARRATIVA

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Guillermo Algaze

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“Early Near Eastern villages domesticated plants and animals. Uruk urban institutions, in turn, domesticated humans.”
Note:LA VIA X ADDOMESTICARE L UOMO

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PUTTING THE STATE IN ITS PLACE
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For us—that is to say Homo sapiens—accustomed to thinking in units of one or a few lifetimes, the permanence of the state and its administered space seems an inescapable constant
Note:L ILLUSIONE DELLA PRESENZA STATUALE

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Compounding this institutional bias is the archaeological tradition,
Note:ILLUSIONE ARCHEOLOGICA

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if you built, monumentally, in stone
Note:COSTRUZIONI

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If, on the other hand, you built with wood, bamboo,

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Once written documents—say, hieroglyphics or cuneiform—appear in the historical record, the bias becomes even more pronounced. These are invariably state-centric texts:
Note:SCRITTI.. ANCHE I NOMADI SCRIVEVANO... MA SU MATERIALE DEPERIBILE

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tribute lists, royal genealogies,

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no contending voices,

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state archives left behind,

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And yet the very first states to appear in the alluvial and wind-blown silt in southern Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Yellow River were minuscule affairs both demographically and geographically.
Note:AFFARI MINUSCOLI

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tiny nodes of power surrounded by a vast landscape inhabited by nonstate peoples—aka “barbarians.”
Note:CAGATINE

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On a generous reading, until the past four hundred years, one-third of the globe was still occupied by hunter-gatherers,

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400 ANNI

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Much of the world’s population might never have met that hallmark of the state: a tax collector.
Note:MONDO SENZA TASSE

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we risk missing the key fact that in much of the world there was no state at all until quite recently.
Note:RISCHIO

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Southeast Asia
Note:STATI DEL

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Those of the New World,

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The states in question were only rarely and then quite briefly the formidable Leviathans that a description of their most powerful reign tends to convey. In most cases, interregna, fragmentation, and “dark ages” were more common
Note:LEVIATANI... MA NN TROPPO

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mesmerized by the records of a dynasty’s

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Greece’s four-century-long “Dark Age,” when literacy was apparently lost, is nearly a blank page compared with the vast literature on the plays and philosophy of the Classical Age.
Note:ESEMPIO CLASSICO

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fragility of state forms.

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recognize that for thousands of years after its first appearance, it was not a constant but a variable,
Note:UNA VARIABILE

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This is a nonstate history
Note:LA STORIA DELL UOMO

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flight from the early state domains to the periphery was quite common,
Note:PERIFERIA

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it contradicts the narrative of the state as a civilizing benefactor
Note:CONTRADDIZIONE

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disease was a major factor in the fragility of the early states.
Note:MALATTIE...DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENT

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slavery, bondage, and forced resettlement
Note:DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENTARE

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THUMBNAIL ITINERARY
Note:ttttttttt

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domestication of fire, plants, and animals
Note:PRIMO CAP...ADDOM

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be gathered—

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Fire,

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allowing us to resculpt the landscape
Note:FUOCO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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fire rendered a host of previously indigestible plants both palatable and more nutritious.
Note:FUOCO E DIETA

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The domestication of grains—especially wheat and barley, in this case—and legumes furthers the process of concentration.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZ

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domestication of plants and animals was, as I have noted, not strictly necessary to sedentism, but it did create the conditions
Note:ADDOM E SEDENTARI

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resettlement camp involved a lot more drudgery than hunting and gathering and was not at all good for your health.
Note:PIÙ FATICA E PIÚ MALATTIE

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Why anyone not impelled by hunger, danger, or coercion would willingly give up hunting and foraging or pastoralism for full-time agriculture is hard to fathom.
Note:ENIGMA?####

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It is not so clear, for example, to what degree we domesticated the dog or the dog domesticated us.
Note:IL SENSO DELL ADDOM

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It is almost a metaphysical question who is the servant of whom—
Note:IL SERVO

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effort of Homo sapiens to shape the entire environment
Note:ADDOM IN SENSO LATO

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The assemblage of plants, animals, and humans in agricultural settlements created a new and largely artificial environment
Note:AMBIENTE

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make the case that the life of farming is comparatively far narrower experientially and, in both a cultural and a ritual sense, more impoverished.
Note:IMPOVERITA

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The burdens of life for nonelites
Note:VITA DURA

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farming was far more onerous than hunting and gathering.
Note:LA TERRA L È BASSA

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no reason why a forager in most environments would shift to agriculture unless forced
Note:CAMBIO FORZATO

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epidemiological effect of concentration—
Note:MALATTIE DA CONCENTRAZIONE

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measles, mumps, diphtheria, and other community acquired infections—
Note:ELENCO

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Antonine plague and the plague of Justinian in the first millennium CE or the Black Death of the fourteenth century in Europe.
Note:EPIDEMIE

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the state plague of taxes in the form of grain, labor, and conscription
Note:ALTRA PIAGA

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state formation was possible only in settings where the population was hemmed in by desert, mountains, or a hostile periphery.
Note:CARNEIRO E STATO

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the grain hypothesis.

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all classical states were based on grain,
Note:STATO E GRANO

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no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit, or sweet potato states.
Note:ccccccc

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only grains are best suited to concentrated production, tax assessment, appropriation, cadastral surveys, storage, and rationing.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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state formation becomes possible only when there are few alternatives to a diet dominated by domesticated grains.
Note:DIETA E STATO

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the state did not invent irrigation
Note:IRRIGAZIONE

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crop domestication;
Note:ANIMALI

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both were the achievements of prestate peoples.

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maintain, amplify, and expand the agro-ecological setting
Note:NN INVENTA MA MOLTIPLICA

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The early state strives to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform landscape of taxable grain crops and to hold on this land a large population available for corvée labor,
Note:IL MODELLO COSTANTE

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what is a state anyway?
Note:LA DOMANDA

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Mesopotamia
Note:ES

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is an institutional continuum,

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specialized administrative staff,

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monumental center,

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tax collection

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the last centuries of the fourth millennium BCE
Note:INIZIO

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the southern Mesopotamian alluvium
Note:LA CULLA

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fixed settlements and domesticated grains can be found earlier elsewhere (for example, in Jericho,
Note:COLTIVAZIONI E GRANO VENGONO PRIMA

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Egypt,
Note:ALTRI STATI SUCCESSIVI

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northern Mesopotamia,

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Indus Valley.

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north China, Crete, Greece, Rome, and Maya.
Note:ccccccccc

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What is required is wealth in the form of an appropriable, measurable, dominant grain crop and a population growing it that can be easily administered and mobilized.
Note:COSA SERVE

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wetlands,
Note:LA VARIETÁ NN SI ADDICE ALLO STATO

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the role of coercion in establishing and maintaining the ancient state.
Note:LA QUESTIONE PIÙ DIBATTUTO

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If the formation of the earliest states were shown to be largely a coercive enterprise,
Note:HOBBES CONFUTATO SE...

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social-contract theorists as Hobbes and Locke,

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The early state, in fact, as we shall see, often failed to hold its population;
Note:FALLIMENTI

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prone to collapse or fragmentation.

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Evidence for the extensive use of unfree labor—war captives,
Note:SCHIAVITÙ E GUERRE

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Unfree labor was particularly important in building city walls and roads,
Note:BENI PUBBLICI

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Formal slavery in the ancient world reaches its apotheosis in classical Greece and early imperial Rome,
Note:APOTEOSI DELLA SCHIAVITÙ

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other forms of unfree labor, such as the thousands of women in large workshops in Ur
Note:MESOPOTAMIA... NN SCHIAVI MA FORZATI

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That a good share of the population in Greece and Roman Italy was being held against its will is testified to by slave rebellions
Note:RIBELLIONI

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fleeing and absconding populations in Mesopotamia.
Note:FUGA E OCCULTAMENTO

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Owen Lattimore’s admonition that the great walls of China were built as much to keep Chinese taxpayers in as to keep the barbarians out.
Note:LE MURA CINESI

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the Mayan “collapse,”
Note:PERCHÈ FALLISCE UNO STATO? SE CI FA STARE TUTTI BENE?

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Egyptian “First Intermediate Period,”

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Greece’s “Dark Age.”

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causes are typically multiple,
Note:RISPOSTA DIFFICILE

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As with a patient suffering many underlying illnesses, it is difficult to specify the cause of death.
Note:TANTE MALATTIE CAUSE MISTERIOSE

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the disease effects of the unprecedented concentrations of crops, people, and livestock
Note:PRIMA CAUSA

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ecological effects of urbanism and intensive irrigated agriculture. The former resulted in steady deforestation
Note:DEFORESTAZIONE EALLUVIONI

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subsequent siltation and floods.
Note:ccccc

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salinization of the soil, lower yields, and eventual abandonment of arable land.
Note:SALE

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“Ba-ba” was meant to be a parody of the sound of non-Greek speech.
Note:BARBARO... I 4/5 DEL MONDO

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those outside the state.
Note:cccccccccc

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I want to argue that the era of the earliest and fragile states was a time when it was good to be a barbarian.
Note:VIVEVANO MEGLIO

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a zone of hunting, slash-and-burn cultivation, shellfish collection, foraging, pastoralism, roots and tubers, and few if any standing grain crops. It is a zone of physical mobility,
Note:TERRITORIO BARBARO

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in a word, “illegible” production.
Note:TROPPA DIVERSITÀ VARIAZIONE COMPLESSITÁ

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diversity and complexity,

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Barbarians are not essentially a cultural category; they are a political category
Note:LA CATEGORIA DEI BARBARI

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taxes and grain end.

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those whose households had been registered
Note:LA REGISTRAZIONE... IL NERO

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entered the map.”
Note:FUORI MAPPA

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Why should one go to the trouble of growing a crop when, like the state (!), one can simply confiscate it from the granary.
Note:ASSURDO COLTIVARE

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Raiding is our agriculture.”
Note:PROVERBIO BERBERO

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the tame European cow was easier to “hunt”
Note:I PELLEROSSA SE NE ACCORSERO

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it invested heavily in defenses against raiding and/or it paid tribute—protection money
Note:RISPOSTA... DIFESA E TASSE

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only the barbarians could supply the necessities without which the early state could not long survive: metal ores, timber, hides, obsidian, honey, medicinals, and aromatics.
Note:RAPINA MA ANCHE MOLTO COMMERCIO

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The result of this symbiosis was a cultural hybridity far greater than the typical “civilized-barbarian” dichotomy
Note:ESITO DEI COMMERCI

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the early state or empire was usually shadowed by a “barbarian twin,”
Note:IL GEMELLO BBARBARO... THOMAS BARFIELD

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Celtic trading oppida at the fringe of the Roman Empire

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the long era of relatively weak agrarian states and numerous, mounted, nonstate peoples
Note:L ETÀ DELL ORO DEI BARBARI

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the main commodity traded to the early states was the slave—
Note:LA MERCE PRINCIPALE

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In addition, it was a rare early state that did not engage barbarian mercenaries
Note:SECONDA MERCE PER IMPORTANZA... IL MERCENARIO@@@@@@@

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CHAPTER FIVE Population Control: Bondage and War
Note:5@@@@@@@@@

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In the multitude of people is the king’s honor, but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.
Note:SERVE LA MASSA MA NON LA SUA VOLONTÀ

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concern over the acquisition and control of population was at the very center of early statecraft.
CONTROLLO

ONE INDIVIDUALISM’S PARADOX The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom by Mark S. Weiner

The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom by Mark S. Weiner

You have 68 highlighted passages

You have 55 notes

Last annotated on April 11, 2017

ONE INDIVIDUALISM’S PARADOXRead more at location 34

Note: Paradosso: l' individualismo moderno è possibile solo attraverso un forte Stato, nonostante tanta retorica libertaria esalti lo spontaneismo... In assenza di Stati il vuoto di potere è colmato da regole spontanee che opprimono ogni forma di di libertà immaginata dagli anarcocapitalisti... il clan è la forma naturale di organizzazione, il mezzo + idoneo a produrre quel bene fondamentale che è la fiducia... La regola del clan è ancora viva in Africa, Medio Oriente, Cina e India. Oltre che nelle mafie e nelle organizzazioni criminali. Spesso anche nelle grandi imprese... Nel clan il singolo vale poco: prima di essere un individuo è un membro del clan. I suoi obblighi nn sono quelli che si assume ma derivano dala posizione che si ha nella famiglia allargata: le donne "devono" riprodurrs. Se X commette un delitto lo si può punire punendo uno qualsiasi del clan. Nella società individualista nn esistono ruoli pre esistenti: ognuno sceglie la sua via liberamente Henry Maine (il Darwin della giurisprudenza): società dello status vs società del contratto. Scoprì che India moderna e Irlanda medievale condividono il medesimo ordinamento giuridico. Rintracciò poi le leggi dell'evoluzione creativa giungendo alla regola di cui sopra... HM riscontrò anche che la diffusione del contratto è resa possibile da un forte stato... Maine riteneva la soc. dei contratti il punto d'arrivo dell'ev. legislativa. Altri, paradossalmente, prevedevano (e auspicavano) uno stadio successivo che ripristinasse l'egalitarismo primitivo... Il principio di "uguaglianza" sostanziale sembra piuttosto confuso, addirittura un errore filosofico. Tuttavia lo si capisce meglio se visto come una nostalgia della società clanica. A volte è proprio qs che si nasconde dietro gli appelli comunitaristi e solidaristi... Il clanismo minaccia sempre di tornare fagocitando le libertà duramente concquistate: bisogna comprenderlo per respingerlo, altrimenti il futuro si presenterà come un clanismo postmoderno. I corpi intermedi diventeranno via via più importanti degli individui... Tocqueville: nelle società liberali il rischio è l'isolamento e i corpi intermedi la soluzione. Ebbene, qui il messaggio è radcalmente differente: sono le associazioni sempre sul punto di trasformarsi in clan... IMHO: il pericolo è quello di pensare che la condanna di certe imposizioni equivalga alla condanna di certe scelte, mentre spesso è vero il contrario: imporre certi doveri familiari può essere sbagliato ma scegliere di investire affettivamente sulla famiglia è quanto di più saggio si possa fare... IMHO: l'associazionismo è anche l'antidoto al problema centrale del liberalismo: l'invidia... 1@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit

Imagine that one fine morning you are strolling down the sidewalk on your way to work. Suddenly, a young jogger wearing headphones turns the corner, running swiftly, oblivious to the world around him. He crashes into you and as you hit the ground you feel a sharp pain in your arm, which quickly begins to swell. It’s broken. Soon after visiting your doctor, you contact your lawyer. He begins a civil suit against the jogger so that you can be compensated for your injury.Read more at location 35

Note: FARE CAUSA A CHI TI ROMPE UN BRACCIO Edit

This individualist focus is fundamental to the law of modern liberal societies. It lies at the core of nations that trace their democratic political heritage to the Enlightenment and their economic roots to the Industrial Revolution—and that hold individual self-fulfillment and personal development as a central moral value.Read more at location 51

Note: INDIVIDUALISTIC FOCUS Edit

In an election, you cast your vote for yourself alone, rather than for your household, village, or tribe. Doing so would seem absurd—it would contravene the axiomatic principle of “one person, one vote.”Read more at location 55

Note: UNA PERSONA UN VORO Edit

When you enter into a marriage, you alone incur its benefits and obligations.Read more at location 57

Note: MATRIMONIO TRA DUE PERSONE Edit

Such individualism extends as well to the legal issues of property and inheritance. In liberal societies, land need not be owned in common by tribal groupsRead more at location 63

Note: INDIVIDUALISMO E PROP Edit

All these facts may seem self-evident, perhaps even obvious. But if one looks beneath them, they point to an essential paradox about individual freedom, a paradox that’s illuminated by examining the subject of this book: the rule of the clan.Read more at location 71

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It’s a common and understandable belief that liberty exists only when the state is absent or weak. Many people often imply that individual freedom flourishes in inverse proportion to the strength and scope of government.Read more at location 73

Note: IL PARADOSSO: L INDIVIDUO VA DIFESO DALLO STATO MA NN ESISTEREBBE SENZA LO STATO. ESISTEREBBE LA LEGGE DEI CLAN Edit

A deep antipathy to the modern state was a core principle of the United States’ longtime enemy Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, who sought, in the words of his manifesto The Green Book, “emancipation from the chains of all instruments of government.”Read more at location 77

Note: IL GRANDE NEMICO DELLO STATO: GHEDDAFI Edit

Mohandas Gandhi advocated for a stateless society of local self-rule for postcolonial India,Read more at location 80

Note: O GHANDI Edit

Yet, whatever form it takes, the belief that individual freedom exists only when the state is frail misunderstands the source of liberty.Read more at location 83

Note: EQUIVOCO SULLE ORIGINI DELLA L Edit

This is the paradox of individualism. The individual freedom that citizens of liberal societies rightly cherish, even our very concept of the individual, is impossible without a robust state.Read more at location 86

Note: RIPETIZ DEL PARADOSSO Edit

healthy government and robust individualism go hand in hand,Read more at location 100

Note: CONCLUSIONE Edit

By contrast, in the absence of the state, or when states are weak, the individual becomes engulfed within the collective groups on which people must rely to advance their goals and vindicate their interests. Without the authority of the state, a host of discrete communal associations rush to fill the vacuum of power.Read more at location 106

Note: SENZA SYATO... IL CLAN Edit

extended family, the clan.Read more at location 108

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The clan is a natural form of social and legal organization—itRead more at location 109

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What exactly is the rule of the clan?Read more at location 120

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First, and most prominently, I mean the legal structures and cultural values of societies organized primarily on the basis of kinship—societies in which extended family membership is vitalRead more at location 122

Note: DIRITTO E FAMIGLIA ESTESA Edit

Today these societies include many in which the United States and its allies have a major strategic interest, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia,Read more at location 124

Note: OGGI DOVE SONO? Edit

These societies possess the outward trappings of a modern state but are founded on informal patronage networks,Read more at location 130

Note: c Edit

government is cooptedRead more at location 131

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the patriarchal family,Read more at location 132

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Clannism is the historical echo of tribalism, existing even in the face of economic modernization. It often characterizes rentier societies struggling under the continuing legacy of colonial subordination, as in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, where the nuclear family, with its revolutionary, individuating power, has yet to replace the extended lineage group as the principle framework for kinship or household organization.Read more at location 133

Note: ECONOMIA DELLA RENDITA. LA RIV DELLA FAMIGLIA NUCLEARE Edit

A form of clannism likewise pervades mainland China and other nations whose political development was influenced by Confucianism,Read more at location 136

Note: CONFUCIANESIMO E CLANISMO Edit

Third, and most broadly, by the rule of the clan I mean the antiliberal social and legal organizations that tend to grow in the absence of state authority or when the state is weak.Read more at location 138

Note: CLAN ANTILIBERAL Edit

These groups include petty criminal gangs, the Mafia, and international crime syndicates, which look a great deal like clans and in many respects act like them. Today corporate conglomerates and collectivist identity groups have the potential to transform into similar clanlike systems.Read more at location 139

Note: MAFIE Edit

Note: CORPORATION Edit

under their legal principles people are valued less as individuals per se than as members of their extended families.Read more at location 144

Note: SOTTO IL CLAN L INDIVIDUO È SOLO MEMBRO Edit

The founding father of legal history and legal anthropology, Henry Sumner Maine, had an illuminating term for such communities. He called them societies of “Status,” which he contrasted with communities he called societies of “Contract.”Read more at location 150

Note: STATUS VS CONTRATTO Edit

storyRead more at location 153

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“from Status to ContractRead more at location 153

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modern India shared core legal ideas about marriage, property, and dispute resolution with medieval Ireland, as the two societies derived those rules from a common Aryan cultural ancestor.Read more at location 179

Note: UNIVERSALITÀ. INDIA E IRLANDA Edit

legal evolution,Read more at location 183

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What are the pathways of legal transformation?Read more at location 184

Note: LA DOMANDA Edit

According to Maine, law has only three methods of development,Read more at location 186

Note: TRE VIE PER EVOLVERE Edit

The first method is legal fictions, ideas that alter the substance of law without changing its letter.Read more at location 188

Note: METODO DELL INTERPRET Edit

The second method is equity, the harmonization of existing law to higher bodies of principles external to the law itself, especially transcendent morals.Read more at location 191

Note: EVOLUZIONE VIA ETICA Edit

The third method is legislation, which changes law through the expressed willRead more at location 193

Note: RIFORMA LEGISL Edit

In Maine’s view, the legal development of “progressive societies” follows a path “from Status to Contract.”Read more at location 198

Note: PERCORSO Edit

By societies of Status, Maine did not mean societies that simply possess a sense of social rank or hierarchy. Instead, he meant those communities in which family groups serve as the primary basis for social organizationRead more at location 203

Note: COS È LO STATUS Edit

the role of women in clan societies is to physically reproduce the clan itself and this role shapes all the legal rules affecting them,Read more at location 206

Note: LA DONNA DEL CLAN Edit

By societies of Contract, Maine meant societies in which law is oriented toward the individual rather than the group, and in which individual choice serves as the central value of the legal order. In such societies, individuals are no longer legally subordinated to their extended families. Instead, the legal order is directed toward fostering the ability of individuals to chart their own lifeRead more at location 208

Note: SOCIESTÀ DEL CONTRATTO. LIBERA SCELTA Edit

Contract was made possible by the growth of the stateRead more at location 212

Note: Tesi Edit

Whereas Maine viewed a liberal society of Contract as an evolutionary endpoint, many of his contemporaries believed that Western nations had one more grand step to take—one that, ironically, would return society to its communal and egalitarian clan past.Read more at location 219

Note: UN PROGRESSO O UN REGRESSO? GLI STIDIOSO SI DI VIDONO Edit

As outlined by Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), the goal of a communist revolution was to re-create the principles and conditions of clan society in a higher historical form.Read more at location 222

Note: L ESEMPIO DEI MARXISTI E EGALITAROSTI IN GENERE Edit

another recent alternative to liberal society, political Islamism, makes an appeal to egalitarianism and social justice that is every bit as powerful as Marxism’s.Read more at location 224

Note: ALTRO ESEMPIO: ISLAMISTI Edit

a potent rhetoric of kin group solidarityRead more at location 225

Note: SOLIDARIETÀ Edit

the global umma as one large clan,Read more at location 226

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Understanding the rule of the clan—Read more at location 230

Note: t Edit

the comfortable social and political conditions in which we live predispose liberals to neglect the rule of the clan’s most distinctive and important features.Read more at location 234

Note: IL RISCHIO: DARE X SCONTATO IL SUPERAMENTO DEL CLAN Edit

In the realm of government, economic growth required the intervention of energetic states dedicated not only to expanding economic liberty, most importantly by making it easy for entrepreneurs to charter limited liability corporations, but also to furthering collective social development, for instance by policing public safety, advancing public health, and promoting public works.Read more at location 248

Note: INDIVIDUALISMO IN ECONOMIA. RICCHEZZA E SICUREZZA CIRCOLAZIONE IDEE Edit

In the realm of politics, similarly, the era witnessed the formal abolition of serfdom and slavery, while the gradual expansion of the franchise enlarged the influence of ordinary people in public life, making government more responsive to the common good.Read more at location 252

Note: INDIVIDUALISMO IN POLITICA. LIBERAL DEMOCRAZIA Edit

Finally, in the realm of culture, popular and elite values alike were reoriented toward the individualist ideals of personal growth and psychological and emotional self-fulfillment.Read more at location 254

Note: INDIVIDUALISMO E CGULTURA. FELICITÀ XSONALE Edit

I believe that if liberals fail to take to heart the lessons of the rule of the clan, particularly the lesson of individualism’s paradox, our future will be a deeply troubling, literally “postmodern” version of our own clan past.Read more at location 264

Note: ANCORA SUL RISCHIO Edit

As various institutions rush to fill the power vacuum left by the state’s decline, we will be overtaken by a new form of the rule of the clan.Read more at location 269

Note: TESI: DOVE RECEDE.LO STATO ARRIVA IL CLAN Edit

individuals begin to cluster into groups to protect themselves and assert their interests. Over time, these groups consolidate their power, becoming more important to the social order than the individuals the liberal state once nurtured.Read more at location 272

Note: SCENARIO DELLO SCIVOLAMENTO Edit

In contemporary political discourse, one frequently encounters the warning of Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in Democracy in America (1835, 1840), that in the United States each person is “throw[n] … back forever upon himself alone” and that democracy may ultimately isolate the individual “entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”Read more at location 274

Note: IL PERICOLO DELL ATOMISMO SEGNALATI DA T. Edit

But from a legal and political perspective, rather than a cultural and moral one, the major threat to liberal societies is precisely the opposite.Read more at location 279

Note: MA IL VERO PERICOLO È IL CLAN Edit

I begin in part II by describing the highly decentralized constitutional structure of the rule of the clan, in which legal and political power reside not in a public authority but rather in numerous kinship groups.Read more at location 292

Note: IL FASCINO DEL CLAN: LA ACCENTRA IZZAZIONE Edit

understand the rule of the clan’s distinctive network of informal legal institutions: its values of group honor and shame, its jurisprudence of customary law, and the threat of blood feud. Group honor, custom, and feud provide the cultural connective tissue of the rule of the clan’s decentralized constitutional structure.Read more at location 301

Note: ELEMENTI COSTOTUTIVI. ONOTED VERGOGNA SANGUE ROTO YRADIZIONI CONSIETGIDINI Edit

I argue that reformers seeking to advance liberal values in clan societies can encourage the growth of a common, public life by looking to mechanisms that work both “from below” and “from above.” I suggest, in particular, that liberals should encourage the spread of information and social media technologies in clan societies, predicting that in time social media will lessen the practical and personal importance of kin identity in much the same way as monotheistic religion did in the European Middle Ages. I also suggest that liberals should promote the development of the middle-class professions, which are the modern parallel to the Germanic ruling class within which a public identity in Anglo-Saxon England first developed.Read more at location 311

Note: COME CONVERTORE O CLAMOSTO: INFPRMARE DELLE ALYERNATOVE. CREARE CLASSE MEDIA CHE PUÒ ARRICCHIRSI N SOC PIÙ APERTE Edit

I also argue that the valorization of the clan in cultural memory is often a sign not of an atavistic regression but instead of liberalism’s legal advent—aRead more at location 325

Note: LE NOSTALGIE SONO SPESSO VISSUTE ALLA.LUCE DEI VALORI.LIBERALI. PRENDI.L INDIVIDUALISMO DELL EROE DEI BEI TEMPI. MA NN CERA ALCUN ONDOV. Edit

I argue that the rule of the clan will always haunt modern liberal society as a postmodern threat: the threat of state erosion, constitutional decentralization,Read more at location 328

Note: IL CLAN TORNA ESASPERANDO LA MODERNITÀ Edi