Exam 10: Anti-Structure and the Collapse of Empire

Adam Smith agreed with Hobbes in claiming that when people act in terms of their self-interest the result is conflict, abuse, and tyranny.

Talal Asad argues that Barth's view of khan-tenant relations as reciprocal probably reflected the fact that he interacted the most with relatively powerful individuals and internalized their view of Swat Pathans society.

According to Bourdieu, an individual's position in society was determined not just by his or her wealth, but also by symbolic, social, and cultural capital.

Marcel Mauss argued that no gift is entirely "free" to the recipient, but always contains the expectation of some return.

Malinowski argued that his functionalist theory would be of great use to the colonial administrators and missionaries who "need to exploit savage trade and savage labor."

Lacking any way to analyze conflict from a functionalist perspective, the anthropologist Max Gluckman simply ignored the "rituals of rebellion" that regularly occur in some African societies.

Frederic Barth argued that his theory of transactionalism-and its assumption of reciprocity in social relationships-applies well within families or egalitarian societies, but breaks down in unequal situations like Swat Pathans.

Launched during the Cold War, Project Camelot sought to employ social scientists to identify the causes of social rebellion, and the actions pro-US governments could take to undermine their political opposition.

From Raymond Firth's perspective, "social organization" consists of the actual behavior of people, as opposed to the rules for behavior prescribed by social structure.

Anthropologists who study economic behavior in non-capitalist societies tend to agree with economists that rationality is universal to all human societies.