Government Structure

(I'm sending this to Conlang rather than Conculture, because I seem to
have been automatically unsubscribed from Conculture *yet again*!  I
hate Onelist...)

>>From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
>>
>>FFlores wrote:
>>>for those who have concultures, what kind of governmental structures
>>>do your cultures have, and what are their conlinguistic names?
>
>The Tokana, being a small-scale society which subsists on hunting,
>gathering, fishing, and gardening, don't have much in the way of
>social stratification or centralised government.  Government is
>generally by consent, and thus egalitarian, although clan elders
>(being authority figures) often exert persuasive power over other
>members of the village.
>
>Having said that, it must also be said that the Tokana occasionally
>exhibit a taste for rabid demagoguery:  Particularly charismatic
>individuals sometimes usurp power, disrupting the usually concensus-
>based decision-making system and becoming (in essence) village
>dictators.  Such individuals (called "mahalek") are usually
>religious leaders or visionaries, and are often "alhtuku", or
>"inverted ones" - a social category which includes various kinds
>of people who are 'born different', including physically deformed
>people, albinos, and breach births, as well as transsexual or
>transgender individuals (what scholars of Native American cultures
>call "berdaches").
>
>Matt.
------------------------------------
Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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