ABSTRACT
The chapters in this volume closely reflect two dominant trends in contemporary social anthropology: the fusion of anthropological and historical interests, and the stress on studies of process rather than the building of structural models. Both trends indicate divergence from an earlier concern with typological description and classification, best exemplified perhaps in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard’s work on African political systems. Nowadays authors explicitly locate their descriptions in historical time, look for interrelations between units as much as for cohesion within them, and are determined to recognise the essential complexity of their subject matter by portraying such varying relations as dialectical, existing at numerous levels, and determined by combinations of political and economic factors. Instead, therefore, of separate accounts of ‘stateless’ and ‘state-based’ societies, we are presented with a kaleidoscopic picture of the historical interaction between tribal and state entities, culminating in the most recent historical events within Iran and Afghanistan: collapse of a dynasty in one case and the creation of a new puppet regime in the other. It is a field ripe for further productive generalisations, yet the very recognition of complexity makes such a task considerably harder.
