After reading and studying Chapter 12, students should be able to:
1. Define political organization.
2. Define and identify three dimensions of political organization.
3. Recognize that all types of political organization have more complex state political systems superimposed over them.
4.Describe the characteristics of political organization in band societies.
5. Recognize the significance of pan-tribal associations for tribes and the similarities and differences between tribes and bands.
6. Understand how the increased social and technological complexity of chiefdoms over bands or tribes is reflected in their political organization.
7. Understand the differences between nation, state, and nation-state.
8. Describe the political organization of state societies and the basis for the authority of the state.
9. Contrast the four types of political structures discussed by Ferraro in his description of the continuum of variation from acephalous societies to state systems.
10. Explain three theories that account for the formation of state societies and recognize that independent cases of state formation might require more than one theory for adequate explanation.
11. Understand how state systems have changed over the millennia, particularly in light of globalization.
12. Recognize the great importance of informal means of social control for complex state organizations as well as for bands and tribes.
13. Understand the great diversity in formal means of social control and the significant difference in the objectives of legal systems in more and less complex societies.
14. Understand how state systems deal with the unauthorized uses of force such as crime, rebellion, and revolution.
15. Understand how warfare serves as a mechanism of social control outside one’s own group or society.
Notes for this section: Political Organization and Social Control notes