Powwow by Gene Davis, 1969 USA
The purpose of concepts in social science is to generate greater concision and synthesis for holistic or generalisable understanding of multifarious and interrelated social phenomena. Having defined ‘society’ as a mode of governance I proposed three adjectival ‘type’ concepts for the evolution of prehistoric societies — individualistic, communalistic, and coordinative. My argument has been that the causal force driving the emergence of new forms of governance (therefore, societies) was the imperative to make decisions — first about subsistence, second about social order, and third about decision making mechanisms. I believe decision making imperatives were survival-oriented for evolution and exerted the primary pressure for elemental cognitive and communicational development in terms of intelligence and language-acquisition.
We can now examine the two broad non-individualistic group-level decision making mechanisms for prehistoric peoples seeking to construct and then maintain effective societies: communalism and coordination. I have not previously defined these terms. At some point in its lifetime every evolving society made a choice for one or the other.
A communalistic society self-consciously and explicitly strives to create the impression (feeling) that its group decision making process operates without leadership. No person has power or authority. The ‘declarative emphasis’ is negative — absence of domination. This process is mutualising. Face-to-face interaction in meetings is considered obligatory or desirable. In reality, of course, some persons will be dominant in discussions by virtue of their sex, knowledge, experience, intelligence, charisma, or physical appearance. These differentiations are acceptable because they stem from ‘natural’ advantages or latent potentials from birth. Nevertheless the conscious purpose of communalism, while also instinctual or innate, is deliberately and instrumentally rational — priority avoidance of conflict. This veering away from conflict is a mixed blessing. It maintains the peace and stimulates cooperation, but it inhibits debate and constitutes a constraint on the ability to form optimal decisions.
A coordinative society establishes divisions of labour in the production of decisions. Individuals are ranked as equivalents of ‘managers’ and specialists. Decision making processes are tiered or distributed. Agenda making and final approval may occur in separate forums. Unanimity and simultaneity of public approval is not a requirement. Leadership influence is fragmented or subdivided. The criteria for leadership may be biological (individualised) or by reputation (trust), attainment (seniority, knowledge), or achievement (property, skills). Kinship can be a surrogate criterion on assumptions that leadership qualities will pass to descendants. The ‘declarative emphasis’ is on the positive efficiency of division of labour in terms of distributions of expertise, time, etc. Minimisation of conflict is a prime goal of these divisions and it always remained the case that participatory input and consensus were essential for cohesion. However, the separations of decisional ranks and forums were advantageous in an opposite respect. Better decisions were obtained if contrary opinions were aired, disputed, processed.
Meeting Point by L. S. Lowry, 1965 England
The above statement about two options for prehistoric decision making is not to say there were no other ‘types’ of prehistoric groups. There probably did exist roving groups led by strongmen — ‘tyrants’ in contrast to ‘elders’ — whose powers to elicit obedience and enforce authority were like those of the Homeric ‘heads of households’, but without Homeric countervailing checks and balances of settlement governance.
The essential difference is that in the absence of legitimisation offered by either a communalistic or coordinated decision making process ‘strongman groups’ could not at this early point in human evolution (long before ‘the organisation’ and ‘rulership’) have properly been ‘societies’ in our conceptual terms. They lacked any structure of governance, the basic precondition of society. Nor were ‘strongman groups’ complexly differentiated internally in the way original individualistic societies were, by biological roles and capabilities. ‘Strongman groups’ would necessarily be bereft of any systemic interaction between autonomous individuals, which is essential for the constitution of societies. The dualistic options of ‘voice and exit’ operative in all prehistoric societies could not have existed as preconditions for the preservation of strongman groups. Nor could such groups have sustained sociational bonds of loyalty, community, consensus.
As previously noted, in the first societies decision making rested on individualised endowments. Those who speak and those who listen in assembly meetings are sorted by strength, intelligence, personality, sex and age. Thereafter this small-scale framework was adapted to two primary emergent parallel or alternating imperatives in larger scale group settings for a) inclusion and sharing of influence in ‘all people’ assemblies with irregular, informal individualised leadership, or, b) more formalised, regularised restriction of decision making to ‘ranked people’ in leadership assemblies.
In fluid voice-exit-loyalty sociations external to family households I assume absence of individual or organisational power to compel obedience, and absence of individual or organisational authority to enforce decisions. I also assume structures of decision making that supersede biological differentiations of T1 individualistic governance but precede T4 organisation. Group-society variables of leadership and decisions suggest only two mechanisms for prehistoric decisions — communalism or coordination.
Next I speculate at a general level about the pressures for and logical choices between these two mechanisms for decision making with a view to discovering or discounting a sequence of experimental transitions and fitness reversals. Then I offer examples of decision making processes with evidence drawn from studies of contemporary proxy-primitive societies. Finally I explain how my categories ‘communalistic-coordinative’ contrast with conventional categories such as ‘egalitarian’, ‘chiefdom’ or ‘hierarchy’.
In contemplating the motives that will have existed for discussing decisions-about-decisions in prehistoric times we have firstly to be realistic about the compositional starting points and the ingrained behavioural patterns. There was certainly a causal relationship between the size of a (bordered, bonded, bound) group society and its decisions about how (equitably yet efficiently) to make decisions. In the typical first (individualistic) society, as I have depicted it — in a mountain cave — an elder male was the dominant though not necessarily prevailing influence over decision making.