CHAPTER 2 STATELESS WORLD-SYSTEMS Applying the term world-system to an inter-societal trade network composed of kinship-based societies may seem inappropriate. Wallerstein's (1979) broad categorization of social systems into: 1. mini-systems (normatively integrated reciprocal societies) 2. world-empires; and 3. world-economies designates only the second two types as world-systems, and thus would seem to preclude world-systems in which mini-systems are the units which are involved in an economic network. Yet many historians, anthropologists and archeologists have found evidence of the existence of intersocietal exchange of fundamental goods among such stateless societies. It is well known that certain important goods such as salt, obsidian and flint as well as prestige items, have been found far from their points of origin, apparently transported across great distances to be used by stateless societies. Curtin (1984) discusses the role of specialized trade diasporas in carrying trade goods across the cultural boundaries of stateless societies. The famous Kula Ring first studied by Malinowski (1961) was a system of ritual exchange among different horticultural societies in the South Pacific. And Sahlins (1972: Chapter 6) has analyzed the nature of trade relations among three sets of stateless societies. The category "stateless societies" is a broad one, encompassing small hunter-gatherer bands and large tribal chiefdoms. We shall discuss various levels and types of social integration and examine the nature of inter- societal exchange among these levels. Bands We know that human beings first ritually buried their dead less than 100,000 years ago. The hunting of big game, and later smaller game, combined with gathering of vegetable matter, was the mode of production until the gradual neolithic horticultural revolution, which occurred first in the eighth millenium B.C., raised the level of food producible in a given land area. Very little is directly known about the social structure of the original hunter-gatherers because archeological evidence does not enable us to infer much about the cultural and social nature of these small, mobile societies. Anthropologists have learned a great deal from studying surviving contemporary hunter-gatherers, although the presumption that these societies, usually driven back into refuge regions by more complex cultures, adequately represent the nature of the original hunter-gather societies is problematic (Leacock, 1982). Ethnographically known hunter-gatherers vary in their level of socio-cultural complexity. The simplest are relatively unintegrated nuclear families producing separately with infrequent contact or cooperation with other families (such as Eskimos and Great Basin Shoshonean Indians) (Steward, 1955: Chapter 6).4 Within these families there exists a mode of production based on immediate use of the products of hunting and gathering by the family. Sharing, rather than exchange, is the operant form of the "economy." As Sahlins (1972: Chapter 1) has pointed out in his discussion of the "Domestic Mode of Production," this is not really reciprocity. Reciprocity implies the separateness of the parties that are reciprocating. Sharing within nuclear families is not exchange but is corporate, transcendent solidarity of a single unit. Individuals do not have separate "rights" to shares and giving is not contingent on a return. Rather resources are distributed for the purpose of the survival and well-being of the whole group. This kind of resource-pooling is termed "householding" by Polanyi (1957). This sort of solidarity exists within the nuclear family in complex societies as well, despite the efforts of some economists to classify children as "consumer durables." These simplest human groups have a gender-based division of labor--men hunt and women gather. This, and the sharing of food among adults, distinguish human groups from all known non-human primate societies (Fried, 1967: 38-49) in which all types of food-gathering are done by both genders. The origin of the gender-based division of labor is not well understood, but Lenski and Lenski (1982) as well as Szymanski (1983) contend that "man, the hunter" emerged as an adaptation to big game hunting in the context of human biological evolutionary trends. The growing size of the human brain made childbirth difficult in conjunction with the slow adaptation to the upright walking position. This resulted in a differential running speed between average males and average females. Big game hunting required long journeys away from camp, while gathering could be combined with child care. These factors, it is alleged, combined with average differences in strength between the sexes and the biological fact that women bear children and lactate, to bring forth the gender-based division of labor. It is not clear why stronger, faster, childrenless women could not have joined in the hunt. Indeed many ethnographic studies report a lack of gender role rigidity among hunter-gatherers. Individuals do occasionally participate in labor usually assigned to the opposite gender. Meillassoux (1981) contends that gender-based differentiation did not create inequality between the sexes until horticultural lineage heads (patriarchs) began controlling marriages for the purpose of expanding relations across lineages and hierarchical controls within them. Sahlins (1972: Chapter 1) characterizes the domestic mode of production of separate family groups as the "original affluent society" because of considerable evidence that their working day is relatively short. Production is directed toward the immediate use of the household, and, compared to the possible levels of population which a given land area could sustain, there is a substantial "underproduction." Scarcity is avoided by controlling population pressure on natural resources. This is accomplished by migration, hiving off when groups become too large, and by infanticide and abandonment of the non-productive aged. Sahlins points to the irony that people work harder in more complex societies than they do in simple ones despite the fact that the productivity of labor increases with complexity. Unintegrated family groups exist in certain ecological areas where hunting-gathering can support only a sparse population (Steward, 1955). In territories where a larger population per land area is possible there often develop larger patrilineal, patrilocal, exogamous lineages which exploit a specifically delimited territory. The recognition of territorial boundaries reduces conflict among groups over resources. These patrilineal bands are single kinship units in which, often, each member's relationship to all other members of the band is specified as a family tie. The close cooperation within these groups extends the incest taboo to the whole band, and thus they are exogamous (Steward, 1955). The mode of distribution within such segmental lineages is usually "sharing- out." A particular hunter may have rights to the choicest parts of the game he captures, but game is generally distributed widely across the band according to normative criteria. These lineage bands meet with culturally related lineages for ritual purposes, periodic larger cooperative hunts, and the facilitation of marriage. Already in these bands kinship-reckoning takes the form of a metaphor whereby larger societal integration can take place. Tribes The development of moieties or clans is the next level of complexity. These are exogamous groups regardless of locality. Members of a single clan, thought to be descended from a totemic ancestor, cannot marry other members of the same clan even though they live in different localities. Sharing-out among clan members of different localities is combined with balanced reciprocity between clans. There are many kinds of reciprocity. Gouldner's (1960) discussion differentiates between loose reciprocity in which the gift is not to be repaid immediately or in exactly equivalent terms and a tighter kind of reciprocity in which more immediate and exact repayment is expected. Loose reciprocity signifies a long-standing trust relationship in which the generosity of the giver and the indebtedness of the receiver are important elements. Of course, it is only necessary to establish such a relationship if trust is problematic. Solidarity within families or lineages does not require reciprocal gift-giving to sustain trust. Thus formal balanced reciprocity develops to sustain solidarity among groups of different lineages or different societies. Malinowski's Kula Ring is a prototypical example. Some hunter-gatherers, those living in particularly bountiful areas, live in rather large sedentary villages with ranked clans and chiefs, indicating the rudiments of a redistributive mode of exchange. Let us discuss these together with horticultural societies in which these more complex forms of social integration are more common. Even though Sahlins points out that people in more complex societies work harder in order to produce both for themselves and for others, he agrees with Service (1975) that collective saving benefits all. It enables surpluses to cover periods of scarcity and to be distributed to families or individuals who cannot provide for themselves. It also makes possible a more complex division of labor, which is especially beneficial in coarse-grained environments where specialization and exchange makes a more diverse set of resources available to the exchanging parties. The neolithic revolution--domestication of plants and animals--was the first major transformation of the human mode of production. Archeological studies show that this transformation took place independently in several locations and at different times. What seems to have been always present was a gradual "positive feed back" in the interaction between humans and certain vegetable and animal life forms (Flannery, 1971). Unlike the more typical relationship, in which use of a natural resource depletes supplies, certain kinds of grain-bearing plants actually expanded in interaction with human usage. Domestication of certain animals also converted exploitation into symbiosis. Societies made a very gradual shift from dependence on hunting and gathering to horticulture and pastoralism, thus expanding the size of the human population which a given land area could support. Intersocietal relations Sahlins (1972: 199) contends that the form of reciprocity varies systematically with the distance of the kinship relationship. Within the household is sharing or pooling of resources without regard to return. This was termed "householding" by Polanyi. Within the band or lineage or clan is sharing-out, the distribution of goods according to normative rules of fairness, again without need of repayment. Sahlins calls both of these forms "generalized reciprocity." Among lineages or clans we see balanced reciprocity. There is an obligation to repay with an approximately equivalent gift. This form also sometimes extends to intersocietal relations. Sahlins characterizes some forms of intersocietal interaction as "negative reciprocity" in which competition and conflict require winning at the expense of the other. The most common intersocietal relationship among hunter-gatherers and horticultural societies is warfare, although groups vary in their attitudes toward territoriality and competition for resources. Dalton (1977) contends that: Among the aboriginal stateless societies with ceremonial exchange, warfare, raiding, and lethal fighting were always present--an important prevailing situation--before colonial peace came, and so political and marriage alliances for purposes of enhanced military strength were important... War parties went forth to kill, to abduct women, capture weapons, and sometimes to capture slaves, crests and land. Peaceful expeditions went forth to visit and feast, conduct ceremonial exchange, trade, arrange marriages, and to use the natural resources of external groups with whom peaceful relationships existed, with, of course, their hosts' permission... (emphasis in the original, Dalton, 1977: 200). According to Service (1975) it is the formation of chiefdoms which makes collective savings possible for segmental societies. Chiefdoms are not states. The prestige of a chief is usually dependent on his abilities to lead and to provide social surpluses without demanding too much from his followers. Chiefs do not monopolize legitimate violence, although they attempt to mediate disputes among individuals, lineages and clans. Sahlins contends that chiefdoms are always theocracies, relying primarily on intervention with the supernatural to apply sanctions to followers. After implying that egalitarian segmental societies are "evolutionary dead-ends," Service explains his position on the emergence of chiefdoms: ...Somehow eventually in a few of them the circumstances that caused occasional redistribution from a center to become more permanent led to a rather more stable all-round chieftanship that could take on further functions... ...We can see... the evolutionary significance of the chiefdom's redistributing theocratic bureaucracy. The "road to civilization" was the developmental career of a few bureaucracies, which under rather unusual environmental conditions, fulfilled themselves eventually in ruling what finally must have been hundreds of former petty chiefdoms. ...Weber's "legitimation" ensures the bureaucracy's and the society's survival (and its growth, if successful) by adding to its functions, and consequently to its greater autonomy. Its survival is also dependent on peaceful successions to office. This first occurred when the big-man (or "charismatic") personal style of redistributional leadership became hereditary, that is, permanent and official--thus beginning an aristocracy as well as a ("traditional") bureaucratic hierarchy of instituted political power (Service, 1975: 306-307). Whereas many theorists have argued that an economic surplus is necessary for the development of a higher level of social integration, Sahlins (1972: 140) and Service (1975) contend that leadership generates a domestic surplus rather than the other way around. In stateless societies "high rank is only secured or sustained by o'ercrowing generosity: the material advantage is on the subordinate's side" (Sahlins, 1972: 205). Chiefdom formation Friedman and Rowlands (1977) describe the process of evolution toward a chiefdom in terms of three relations of production: the social appropriation of nature by local lineage production; relations between lineages--most importantly matrimonial exchange in which wife-givers have greater status than wife-takers; and the relations between lineages and the community as a whole--the conversion of lineage surplus into distributive feasts. They point out that prestige goods traded with other tribes may have more than a sumptuary function. Among the Trobriand Islanders, control over elite goods is a source of power over labor because these goods are necessary for marriage and other obligatory payments. The case of Hawaiian chiefdoms illustrates important limitations on stateless efforts to expand redistribution. Hawaiian chiefdoms experienced a cycle of expansion, rebellion and breaking up suggestive in some broad ways of the rise and fall of empires. Sahlins describes: ... the tendency, on which traditions discourse at length, for chiefly domains to enlarge and contract, extended once by conquest only to be partitioned again by rebellion. And this cycle was geared to a second, such that the rotation of one would set off the other. Ruling chiefs showed a propensity to "eat the power of government too much;" that is, to oppress the people economically, which the chiefs found forced to do when the political domain was enlarged, despite their obligations as kinsmen and chiefs to consider the people's welfare, which they nevertheless found it difficult to do even when the polity was reduced... The chieftainship besides enjoyed no monopoly of force. It had to meet its diverse problems of rule organizationally then, by a certain administrative formation; a bloated political establishment that sought to cope with a proliferation of tasks by multiplication of personnel, at the same time as economizing its scarce real force by an awesome display of conspicuous consumption as intimidating to the people as it was glorifying to the chiefs. It fell especially on those nearest the paramount, within a range that made transport worthwhile and the threat of sanctions effective. Conscious, it seems, of the logistic burdens they were obliged to impose, the Hawaiian chiefs conceived several means to relieve the pressure, notably including a career of conquest with a view toward enlarging the tributary base. In the successful event, however, with the realm now stretched over distant and lately subdued hinterlands, the bureaucratic costs of rule apparently rose higher than the increases in revenue, so that the victorious chief merely succeeds in adding enemies abroad to a worse unrest at home (Sahlins, 1972: 144-145).5 Earle (1977) disputes Service's (1975) contention that chiefdoms emerged to facilitate exchange among villages producing different types of goods. His analysis of the Hawaiian chiefdoms shows that, even though the villages occupy very different ecological niches, they remain self- subsistent. The surplus appropriated by chiefs was used exclusively for the provisioning of the royals and for waging war, not for redistributive exchange among the villages. Earle (1977: 215) distinguishes between several types of redistribution, of which there are: 1. Leveling mechanisms: any cultural institution the effect of which is to counteract the concentration of wealth by individuals or groups. Examples: ceremonial obligations, potlatching, progressive taxation. 2. Share-out: The allocation of goods produced by cooperative labor to participants and the owners of the factors of production. Example: distribution of meat resulting from cooperative hunts. 3. Mobilization: The recruitment of goods and services for the benefit of a group not coterminous with the contributing members. Examples: tribute, taxation and corv‚e labor. It is this last type, attributed to Smelser (1959), which Earle claims is the major operant form in the Hawaiian chiefdoms. Hunter-gatherers are sometimes found to be involved in institutionalized trading relationships with horticulturalists (Steward, 1955). Congo rain forest "Negritos" (pygmies) shared this kind of division of labor, which we may characterize as a mini world-system. In such a relationship the hunter-gathers were the more dependent partner, although this dependency is very different from core/periphery relations found in larger world- systems. Among the Congo Negritos each band has its own patrimonial relationship with a particular horticultural group of Negro farmers for whom it supplies meat in reciprocity for vegetable foods. Rituals of solidarity cement this particularistic bond and the exchange can in no way be characterized as trade. Bahuchet and Guillaume (1982: 195), after describing the cultural attitudes in which the farmers conceive of them- selves as "masters" and the pygmies as "savages," go on to state: The socio-economic relations which objectively link the two groups do not, in fact, correspond to the state of subjugation that ideological representations legitimize. For a long time, contacts have taken the form of balanced reciprocity of services, based upon complementary opposition of technologies and modes of adaptation to the natural environment. Exchange networks Curtin (1984) describes the tendency for groups who have access to scarce resources such as salt, iron or fish to develop into specialized trade middlemen carrying goods across many different societies. These kinds of goods are also found to travel long distances through a "relay trade" in which each society passes things along in exchange for other things. Renfrew (1975: 42) describes ten modes of intersocietal exchange to distinguish their implications for spatial analysis: 1. Direct access is a type (not really exchange) in which each society travels to the source of a good and appropriates it. 2. Home-based reciprocity involves one group bringing goods to the living quarters of another group, whereas 3. Boundary reciprocity involves exchange at the territorial boundaries of groups. 4. "Down the line" exchange is what Curtin calls the relay trade. 5. Central place redistribution involves bringing goods to a central location where they are exchanged reciprocally for other goods. 6. Central place market exchange serves as a central market for buyers and sellers. 7. Middleman trade involves a specialized group which carries different goods to various locations. This is equivalent to Curtin's trade diasporas. 8. Emmisary exchange involves B sending an emmisary, who is his agent and under his jurisdiction to exchange goods with A. 9. Colonial enclave involves a center setting up trading posts for exchange with a periphery, while 10. Port-of-trade designates a neutral location where representatives of different political entities meet to exchange goods according to the political requisites of tribute agreements. In pre-Incan Peru a very coarse-grained ecology based on different elevations (the "vertical archepelago") developed into a reciprocal world-economy in which each village contributed its own special product in tradeless reciprocal exchange. The reciprocity was arranged within lineages, each of which had members in each village, thus assuring stable solidary exchanges (Murra, 1980: xxiii). LaLone (1982) contends that each lineage established colonies in the various ecological zones in order to avoid the uncertainties of market exchange. In the Southwest of the United States there is archeological and ethnographic evidence of an interactive relationship between raiding societies and horticulturalists (Steward, 1955). Hunter-gatherers living near horticulturalists developed a pattern of raiding grain supplies. The horticultural societies of the Southwest, for their part, ceased living in separate lineage groups spread over the territory and began living in densely populated defensive communities on the tops of mesas. While this instance of mutual interaction affected both types of society, and is similar in some ways to the interaction of steppe nomads with the Chinese urban-agrarian states, it differs in that no known economic division of labor or exchange emerged, nor were relations of tribute exchange developed. Thus, while the Pueblo Indians had a higher level of social integration than the raiders, the relationship between them ought not be considered a core/periphery relationship. Curtin (1984: 16) reports that African pastoral nomads along the desert edge, the Sahel, have long exchanged meat and milk for the grain and fibre for clothing produced by sedentary farmers. He indicates that the relationship between these groups was sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent. In either case there is no indication of a stable core/periphery relationship. Rather we have exchange between societies with different resource bases. Sahlins (1972: Chapter 6) describes three separate exchange networks among simple societies in which supply and demand principles seem to be operating, and yet none of the exchanges can be considered market trade. The scarcity of goods and the difficulty of transport from source points affects the rates at which goods exchange, and yet there are no price- setting markets. In Northern Queensland, Australia, we find a relay trade in which band is linked to band along a line which runs approximately 400 miles south from the Cape York coast. Each group is limited to contacts with its immediate neighbors, thus only indirectly related to bands further along the line. The trade itself proceeds in the form of gift exchanges between elders standing as classificatory brothers (Service, 1972: 281). The rates of exchange vary with the distance away from the source of a good. In another area, the Vitiaz Straits in Melanesia, Sahlins describes the Siassi Islanders and, in different areas several similar groups, who specialize as trade middlemen. The trading groups are themselves marginally if centrally situated, often perched precariously on stilt-house platforms in the middle of some lagoon, without a mow of arable land to call their own or any other resources save what the sea affords them--lacking even wood for their canoes or fibers for their fishnets. Their technical means of production and exchange are imported, let alone their main stocks in trade. Yet the traders are typically the richest people of their area.... This prosperity is the dividend of trade, amassed from a number of surrounding villages and islands, themselves better endowed by nature but tempted to commerce with the Siassi for reasons ranging from material to marital utility. The Siassi regularly exchanged fish for root crops with adjacent villages of Umboi Island; they were the sole suppliers of pottery for many people of the Vitiaz region, transhipping it from the few places of manufacture in northern New Guinea. In the same way they controlled the distribution of obsidian from its place of origin in northern New Britain. But at least equally important, the Siassi constituted for their trade partners a rare or exclusive source of bridewealth and prestige goods--such items as curved pig's tusks, dog's teeth, and wooden bowls. A man in neighboring areas of New Guinea, New Britain, or Umboi could not take a wife without some trade beforehand, direct or indirect, with the Siassi. The total consequence of Siassi enterprise, then, is a trade system of specific ecological form: a circle of communities linked by the voyages of a centrally located group, itself naturally impoverished but enjoying on balance an inward flow of wealth from the richer circumference. A third system Sahlins describes is that which exists in the Huon Gulf. The semicircular coastal network of the Gulf again unites ethnically heterogenous communities.... Trade, however, is affected through reciprocal voyaging: people of a given village visit and in turn are visited by partners from several other places, both up and down the coast, although usually from the nearer rather than the more distant vicinity. The trade partners are kinsmen, their families linked by previous inter-marriage; their commerce accordingly is a sociable gift exchange, balanced at traditional rates.... For those inclined to belittle the practical (or "economic") significance of primitive trade, the Huon Gulf network affords a salutary antidote. Certain villages would not have been able to exist as constituted in the absence of trade (Sahlins, 1972: 286-288). In the Huon Gulf the prices of goods are generally set and do not vary with distance from their sources, but supply and demand seem to be operating at the level of the whole network. The village of Busama pays more for pots than they can get for them exchanging elsewhere because these pots enable them to obtain other goods they could not obtain without them. In the other regionsSahlins (1972: 295-297) presents evidence that exchange rates vary over long periods of time as the relative scarcities of trade goods alter, and exchange rates vary over space to take transport costs into account. So what explains these changes reflecting supply and demand in systems where price-setting markets do not seem to be operating? Sahlins suggests important differences between primitive exchange and the model of a price- setting market. One important difference is that the units that are exchanging are not individuals, but solidary groups. Thus, if bargaining is going on, it is collective bargaining. Curtin also found collective bargaining prevalent in the operations of trade diasporas. But Sahlins argues that, rather than bargaining to receive the best profit in any particular transaction, primitive exchange involves a theory of fair trade in which generosity on both sides is an important element sustaining the exchange relationship over time. Thus scarcity or transport costs are taken into account in the notion of a fair rate of exchange. "...rates are set by social tact, notably by the diplomacy of economic good measure appropriate to a confrontation between comparative strangers" (1972: 302). Since trade partners attempt to sustain their relationships through relative over- payment, the terms of fair exchange can alter with circumstances affecting the known relative scarcities of goods. What is fair varies with distance and over time. While Curtin uses the term "markets" to describe the exchanges between stateless societies, his focus on the importance of trade diasporas acknowledges the socially embedded nature of these exchanges. "To organize trade through a stateless area required elaborate cultural adjustments, often including complex manipulation of kinship and religious beliefs..." (Curtin, 1984: 27-28). Dalton (1977: 201) explains why true market exchange was rare among stateless societies: "One reason why ordinary commercial marketplace purchase and sale was absent, infrequent, or possible only under very special conditions before colonial peace came was that hostile relations prevailed, making it impossible for persons from different lineages and clans--who were not allies--to mingle peacefully in a marketplace." He mentions two exceptions: 1) gimwali, a petty market exchange in which pariah woodcarvers hawked their wooden bowls in exchange for yams, and 2) an exchange of utilitarian goods carried out by clanmates of the kula partners while abroad on kula ceremonial exchange expeditions. Dalton contends that these were unimportant exceptions to the main patterns of sharing and reciprocity operating within and between stateless societies. Conclusions: stateless world-systems What can we conclude about the nature of stateless world-systems? Curtin (1984) contends that those groups in Africa that had access to a rare good, such as salt, fish or iron, tended to specialize in trade by setting up a trade diaspora, and he gives several examples. On the other hand, Sahlins (1972) reports a trading group (the Siassi) which is distinguished by its lack of original exchangeable resources. It is this poor resource base combined with a central location which seems to explain why the Siassi became the trading middlemen of the Vitiaz Straits. It is agreed that differential access to resources, such as occurs in an ecologically broad-grained environment, encourages intersocietal exchange, but which group may come to specialize in trade is not entirely predictable by original access to exchangeable goods. What about the institutional nature of exchange within and between stateless societies? Curtin claims that the exchanges are market-like because collective bargaining is present and prices reflect supply and demand. He also points to the precarious nature of this exchange because of lack of trust among trading groups. This is why the institution of the trade diaspora emerges; a culturally solidary group can organize long distance trade relations among its members, while allowing for special and institutionally isolated exchange relations to occur among societies which are based on kinship. Sahlins presents an impressive argument to support his contention that true market trade is absent among stateless societies. He agrees that an approximation of supply and demand rates of exchange exist in some of the trading networks, but explains these by the operation of reciprocity. A system of values emphasizing fairness and mutual generousity is extended to intersocietal exchange. This allows transport costs, scarcity, and labor costs to be reflected in rates of exchange. Everyone agrees that exchanges within stateless societies are primarily marketless, and I think Sahlins and the other substantivists have made a good case that price-setting markets are rarely found among stateless societies which are unaffected by relations diffused or imposed from state-based systems. Let us review the types of reciprocity and redistribution found within and among stateless societies. Within hunter-gatherer groups we find sharing (income pooling in households) sharing-out (distribution of goods according to normative criteria) and balanced reciprocity among households, lineages and clans. Sahlins also uses the term "negative reciprocity" to characterize unfriendly relations between these societies. Warfare and stealing are common between hunter-gatherer societies, and also between hunter-gatherers and farmers. These conflictive relations may affect the ecological locations and internal organizational nature of the competing societies. But, at least among hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists, they do not result in conquests which erect a hierarchical division of labor. As Dalton (1977: 201) says," ...victory in a raid did not entail political incorporation or permanent subjection of the defeated, although it did sometimes entail extermination of lineages, capturing women and children, and, on the northwest coast, capturing men as slaves." Redistribution is most generally defined as any situation in which goods are brought to a central place and then redistributed. But Earle (1977: 214) has argued that important differences exist between leveling mechanisms (which also may be understood as reciprocity), sharing-out (the redistribution of the product of a hunt to those who participated in the hunt) and mobilization (the appropriation of goods by a group that has not participated in direct production, for purposes determined primarily by that group). As we have seen, the mobilizational form of redistribution is somewhat weakly institutionalized in chiefdoms. Chiefdomly mobilization is still greatly dependent on relations of reciprocity, and only weak means of enforcement of collections exist. When we look at the institutional nature of intersocietal exchanges between stateless societies we see primarily balanced reciprocity and warfare. Sharing, leveling, and sharing-out do not exist, and true market exchange is extremely rare. Mobilization may exist when a chiefdom conquers a neighboring village and extracts tribute, but as we have seen this is an unstable and weakly supported form. Core/periphery relations? Do stateless world-systems have core/periphery hierarchies? In order to be clear about what we mean by a core/periphery hierarchy we should provide a general definition which may be applied to all types of world- systems. A number of elements may be involved in the intersocietal relations which constitute a core/periphery hierarchy: 1. Societies at different levels of socio-cultural integration and economic productivity; 2. Interdependence resulting from exchange; 3. A dominance/dependence relationship based on either coercion or economic power; 4. Unequal exchange such that trade benefits the core area more than the peripheral area. This can be based on political exploitation or hierarchical economic exchange in which the core profits at the expense of the periphery; Can we then speak of core/periphery relations in stateless world- systems? Usually by this we mean a hierarchical division of labor backed up by force.6 The closest thing we found to dominance/dependence in a reciprocal relationship was that between the Negrito hunter bands and their farmer household patrons. This reciprocity was, however, not enforceable on the hunters, and the terms of the exchange were not exploitative. In the Southwestern United States we found military interaction between settled horticulturalists and raiding hunter-gatherers, but no institutionalized exchange of goods. It has been argued that the Pueblo horticulturalist became incorporated as peripheral exporters of turquoise to the core states in valley of Mexico (Weigand, et. al., 1977), but there is no evidence that the hunter-gatherer raiders were involved in this exchange with the urbanized states of Mexico. It was the raiders who were gaining from the warfare, not the more developed Pueblo Indians, a reversal of the usual core/periphery relationship. Many theories of state-formation, which we shall review in the next section, focus on conquest of one society, usually settled horticultur- alists, by nomadic pastoralists or hunters. As we have seen, Dalton disputes the existence of conquest and subjugation among stateless societies. Service reviews ethnographically known primitive states: the Zulu, the Ankole in Uganda, the West African kingdoms, the Cherokees and the emergence of conquest states in Polynesia. He contends that such conquest states were formed "in a historical continuum of long-standing military states and empires" (Service, 1975: 271) and are not typical of relations among stateless societies. In his discussion of the valley of Mexico he observes that: Competition frequently resulted in warfare, which may have resulted in a special form of cooperation, wherein the defeated submitted to collaboration with the others under the direction of the erstwhile alien authority. Such a consequence seems actually rare in the primitive world, and possibly is feasible only in the context of chiefdoms evolving into a state (Service, 1975: 173). The chiefdoms had the most potential for arranging a core/periphery hierarchy. They had the rudiments of mobilizational resources and did engage in conquest. The tribute demanded of conquered villages must be considered exploitative. We have seen however, that chiefly expansion was not very stable because the mobilizational institutions were weak, compromised as they were by the norms of reciprocity. The chiefdom did not enjoy much relative autonomy. The present survey indicates that true states are a prerequisite to the institutionalization of an hierarchical core/periphery relationship.