Marvin Harris (Our Kind): How to be a Headman

Then a headman gives a command; he has no certain physical means of punishing those who disobey. So if he wants to stay in "office," he gives few commands. In contrast, the political power of genuine rulers depends on their ability to expel or exterminate any readily foreseeable combination of disobedient individuals and groups. Among the Eskimo, a group will follow an outstanding hunter and defer to his opinion with respect to choice of hunting spots. But in all other matters, the "leader's" opinion carries no more weight than any other man's. Similarly, among the !Kung, each band has its recognized "leaders," most of whom are males. These men may speak out more than others and are listened to with a bit more deference, but they have no formal authority and can only persuade, never command. When Lee asked the !Kung whether they had "headmen" in the sense of powerful chiefs, they told him, "Of course we have headmen! In fact we are all headmen . . . each one of us is headman over himself."

Headmanship can be a frustrating and irksome job. Among Brazilian Indian groups such as the Mehinacu of Brazil's Xingu National Park, headmen remind one of zealous scoutmasters on overnight cookouts. The first one up in the morning, the headman tries to rouse his companions by standing in the middle of the village? plaza and shouting at them. If something needs to be done, it is the headman who starts doing it, and it is the headman who works at it harder than anyone else. He sets an example not only for hard work but for generosity. After a fishing or hunting expedition, he gives away more of the catch than anyone else; and in trading with other groups, he is careful not to keep the best items for himself.

In the evening, he stands in the center of the plaza and exhorts his people to be good. He calls upon them to control their sexual appetites, work hard in their gardens, and take frequent baths in the river. He tells them not to sleep during the day or bear grudges against each other. All the while he carefully avoids making accusations of wrongdoing against a specific individual. Robert Dentan refers to a similar pattern of leadership among the Semai of Malaysia. Despite attempts by outsiders to bolster up the power of Semai leaders, the headman was merely the most prestigious figure among a group of peers. In Dentan's words, the headman keeps the peace by conciliation rather than coercion. He must be personally respected.... Otherwise people will drift away from him or gradually stop paying attention to him.... Furthermore, most of the time a good headman gauges his general feeling about an issue and bases his decision on that, so that he is more a spokesman for public opinion than a molder of it.

Then let me hear no more of our kind's natural necessity to form hierarchical groups. An observer viewing human life shortly after cultural takeoff would easily have concluded that our species was destined to be irredeemably egalitarian except for distinctions of sex and age. That someday the world would be divided into aristocrats and commoners, masters and slaves, billionaires and homeless beggars would have seemed wholly contrary to human nature as evidenced in the affairs of every human society then on earth.