ABSTRACT
As suggested at the outset, chiefs rule in chiefdoms and kings reign over states, while meritocratic entrepreneurs such as big-men, famed hunters, or shamans have merely influence in more acephalous societies. States possess a unique power centre manifesting sovereignty, characterized by ultimate control of the populations which are their subjects. In chieftaincies only hegemony obtains: autonomous foci of power exist over which the centre is merely preponderant (perhaps only for reasons of tradition or prestige) and any of which might secede to form the nucleus of another chiefdom. Yet most theories of state formation fall at the first hurdle through their authors’ failure, or their formulation’s inability, to distinguish chief dom from true state. There is governance in the former, only in the latter is there government: overall social regulation by specialized apparatuses of control emanating from a unique power centre. Unlike the chiefdom, ‘the state is never the kinship system writ large, but is organised on totally different principles’ (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940:6) which can be summed as the contrast between statuses and offices.1
