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Concept
Stateless society
Summary
A stateless society is a society that is not governed by a state. In stateless societies, there is little concentration of authority; most positions of authority that do exist are very limited in power and are generally not permanently-held positions; and social bodies that resolve disputes through predefined rules tend to be small. Different stateless societies feature highly variable economic systems and cultural practices.
While stateless societies were the norm in human prehistory, few stateless societies exist today; almost the entire global population resides within the jurisdiction of a sovereign state, though in some regions nominal state authorities may be very weak and may wield little or no actual power. Over the course of history most stateless peoples have become integrated into external state-based societies.
Some political philosophies, particularly anarchism, regard the state as an unwelcome institution and stateless societies as the ideal, while Marxism considers that in a post-capitalist society, the state would become unnecessary and would wither away.
In archaeology, cultural anthropology and history, a stateless society denotes a less complex human community without a state, such as a tribe, a clan, a band society or a chiefdom. The main criterion of "complexity" used is the extent to which a division of labor has occurred such that many people are permanently specialized in particular forms of production or other activity, and depend on others for goods and services through trade or sophisticated reciprocal obligations governed by custom and laws. An additional criterion is population size. The bigger the population, the more relationships have to be reckoned with.
Evidence of the earliest known city-states has been found in ancient Mesopotamia around , suggesting that the history of the state is less than 6,000 years old; thus, for most of human prehistory the state did not exist.
Official source
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