ABSTRACT
Certain cases of indigenous state formation are particularly challenging and informative, for several reasons. In such cases, through the use of oral traditions and historical documents, we can gain some direct access to indigenous sociopolitical theory and ideology. Further, because of the physical scale of such societies, one can hope to gain a lively sense of the quality of human thought and social labour that is invested in the structuring and creation of these states. That is, one can appreciate the human scale of such cultural acts.1 As members of contemporary state organizations whose presence is so heavily felt, social scientists have too often lost the quality of this scaling to the logic and vocabulary of systems theory, reified social institutions (e.g. ‘the economy’ or ‘the administration’), and abstract material-economic principles (Kus 1985). In a sense our experiences as members of a state make it difficult for us to conceptually hold onto a notion of ‘social praxis’, let alone act upon such a notion. What is suggested in the following argument is that such a notion may have been more readily available to members of emergent state formations. The primary state formation of Imerina in central Madagascar will serve as the focus of the following discussion (see Fig. 8.1).
