The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies
The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies
复制标题
前现代社会不平等的出现和持续
DOI：
10.1086/649567
复制
发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
R. Waller
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Waller
众所周知，权力、财富和影响力的显著不平等一直存在于前现代社会。本系列论文试图量化这种不平等，探索其根源，更重要的是，考虑这种不平等是否会从一代延续到下一代。以下评论重点关注东非的牧民不平等问题，并为今后的分析提供一些建议。要证明过去的牧民不平等并不困难，无论是通过轶事还是通过推理（Waller，1999）;要以量化和跨社会可比的方式证明其持续存在要困难得多。要有效地做到这一点，就需要那种除了最近的过去之外无法获得的纵向数据。Kambuya的牛，经典的和几乎独特的研究处置一个牛群在20世纪60年代，没有先例：我们不知道Kambuya如何继承他的牛或他的儿子如何处置他们的牛群轮流（Goldschallen 1969）。1900年以前，没有关于东非股票所有权的水平和变化的精确数据，而最早从1900年到1960年代之间的数据也很少。当然，殖民地官员确实统计了非洲的牲畜数量，通常与放牧控制和免疫计划有关，但幸存的材料是分散的，很少能确定家庭（安德森，2002）。充其量，我们只能得到不同时间和地点的畜群所有权的快照，尽管这些快照显示了不平等，但不能用来构建本文所用的那种数学模型。因此，要把关于持久性的论点延伸到过去，就需要仔细的推理，也需要澄清“前现代”的含义，因为许多游牧社会长期以来一直在从事
That marked inequalities of power, wealth, and influence have always existed in premodern societies is well known. The present set of papers attempts to quantify this inequality, to explore its origins and, importantly, to consider whether it may persist from one generation to the next. The following comments focus on pastoral inequality in East Africa and offer some suggestions for future analysis. It is not difficult to demonstrate pastoral inequality in the past, either anecdotally or by inference (Waller 1999); it is far more difficult to prove its persistence in ways that are both quantified and comparable across societies. To do so effectively would require the sort of longitudinal data not available, except from the very recent past. Kambuya’s Cattle, the classic and almost unique study of the disposal of one herd in the 1960s, has no antecedents: we do not know how Kambuya inherited his cattle or how his sons disposed of their herds in turn (Goldschmidt 1969). There are no precise data on levels of and changes in stock ownership in East Africa before 1900 and very little between then and the 1960s at the earliest. Colonial officials did, of course, count African livestock, generally in connection with grazing control and immunization schemes, but the material that survives is scattered and rarely identifies households (Anderson 2002). At best, we have snapshots of herd ownership at different points in time and place that, while showing inequality, cannot be used to construct the sort of mathematical models used here. To extend the argument about persistence back into the past will thus require careful inference and also a clarification of what is meant by “premodern” because many pastoral societies have long been engaged with the