Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces the idea of a paradigm and the paradigms of political anthropology. It examines the trend in anthropology that denies that any idea or phenomenon is "essential" to the study of the human condition. The book also discusses that the idea of political power is utterly essential to any consideration of political phenomena and, as noted, pervades all the paradigms. It explores the results of the twenty-plus years of debate that this discovery triggered as anthropologists worked to understand the intricacies of the political organizations embedded in kinship relations and the algebra of the practices and politics they involved. The book considers the paradigm of political evolution. It provides a critical analysis of the anthropological study and interpretation of the state and also explores the idea of the vertical entrenchment of state governments.