Researching Power, Elites and Leadership

Christopher Williams

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780857024299, 9780857024282
• eBook ISBN: 9781446292488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

This exciting new text consolidates the hows and whys of researching powerful people.

Written by a leading authority in the field, this book introduces the reader to a significant area of methodology, and provides a research-based contribution to elite and leadership studies. It offers a truly international perspective that will appeal to those studying and engaging with powerful people in a variety of contexts.

Useful features include:

- A variety of case studies and examples linked to over 1000 sources and resources

- Extensive use of figures throughout the text to illustrate key points

- Templates and models for planning and presentations

The book promotes a practical future-oriented approach to support and inspire academic, professional and civil society researchers at all levels. It introduces new research frameworks and facilitates critical techniques through Critical Process Analysis.

This is a must-have resource and an excellent new addition to the field of elite and leadership studies.

PART ONE

UNDERSTANDING

Chapter 1 – Up-system research uses a very wide range of research methods, and some of these have existed for 4000 years. So it is helpful to understand the origins of researching powerful people, the systems of analysis that have been used, and the questions and concepts that have interested researchers throughout history.

Chapter 2 – From these origins, many theories have emerged. There are three main areas – elite and leadership studies, and the aspect common to both, power. But powerful people function in relation to people who have less power, and therefore understanding the populace and followers is also relevant.

1

ORIGINS

1.1 ANTHROPOLOGY

1.2 HISTORY

1.3 PHILOSOPHY

1.4 UP-SYSTEM RESEARCH

There is a Scottish joke about a powerful landowner who found a tramp camping on his land, and ordered him to leave. But the tramp asked the landowner,

“Why is this land yours?”

“Because I inherited it from my father”, was the landowner’s reply.

“And how did he get it?” asked the tramp.

“He inherited it from his father” said the landowner.

This pattern of questioning continued back into history, until the landowner remembered a famous ancestor. Hoping to stop the argument, he said,

“And this man owned this land because a thousand years ago he fought a battle right here, and won it.”

The tramp said,

“I see. So I’ll gladly fight you for this little bit, right here, right now. Put up your fists.”

Claims to power are often very questionable when properly researched. It is easier to claim authority on the basis of myths that cannot be proved, than on facts that can. This is a good reason for understanding the origins of up-system research, especially its weaknesses.

This chapter helps to avoid “reinventing the wheel” – a surprising amount of methodology and theory that is presented as new has been around a long time. The chapter is structured in relation to traditional methodological approaches, which also indicate how elites and leadership have evolved across 5000 years. But the purpose is to identify how powerful people have been researched, not to provide a comprehensive analysis of how power has been used. Anthropologists have investigated how power is gained and maintained in small-scale non-industrial communities, and suggest what happens when communities have no elites (C1.1). Historical, archaeological and biographical studies of powerful people reveal information about elite lifestyles and ruling ideologies (C1.2), which created the evidence for philosophical arguments about the ethics of ruling and rulers (C1.3).

1.1 ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGY

The science of mankind. (OED)

Anthropologists usually study “others” – small-scale social groups that are different from their own. This has often included documenting the conduct of diverse elites and leaders, and ‘up’-system research became more formalized in the 1970s.¹ Ethnography – direct observation and recording – has been central, and this often involved participant observation – observation through becoming part of the group being studied. But this study of others was often itself a way for dominant peoples to rationalize and misuse their power, particularly in colonial settings.

Anthropologists conclude that anarchical (non-hierarchical) and acephalous (headless) systems of governance have been rare. But the absence of identifiable leaders does not necessarily mean the absence of leadership, which may be transient and situational. The Bronze Age buildings in Crete show no signs of Kings or Queens, but leadership may still have been ‘performed’² through rituals and festivals which left no artefacts or architecture. Seemingly leaderless societies are usually small-scale hunter–gatherer groups,³ or recent ideological movements such as Israeli Kibbutz dwellers and the anarchists in Catalonia.⁴ An apparent absence of leadership can sometimes be seen within terrorist groups,⁵ organizations based on humility such as the Quakers, or protest movements such as the ‘leaderless revolution’ that ousted Egyptian President Mubarak in 2011.⁶ In the 1940s, a study of 40 ‘chiefless’ tribes of the Nuer society of Southern Sudan, found that decisions were few and usually taken at family and interpersonal levels. Major disagreements between men were settled by duels to the death.⁷ Leaderless systems seem fragile and unworkable in large societies. The significant recent example is Somalia, which dismantled its government in 1991.⁸ This supports an obvious conclusion, which was the basis of classical elite theory (C2.2). Hierarchies are found in almost all systems.⁹ Elites and leaders seem intrinsic to the survival of most societies as we now know them, and the elite theorists argued that understanding powerful people is therefore a basis for understanding human civilization.

Studies of small-scale tribal communities provide indications of how systems of power operated in early societies.¹⁰ Greco-Roman writers detailed tribal life surrounding the European city states of that time, and more recent anthropologists have continued this form of study. But it is misleading to assume that descriptions of more recent so-called “pre-literate” and “pre-industrial” societies intrinsically also explain pre-historic and other early human communities. The context is very different, and tribes adapt to modern demands – present-day Mescalero Apaches now use their former Inn of the Mountain Gods for tourism and gambling. However, understanding how small-scale societies use power can provide insights into the underlying structures of power in larger societies. A basic distinction explains how power arises. There are formalized systems of authority within which power is usually ascribed or inherited. In parallel, there are usually agreements about how power is achieved through warfare or hunting skills, intellectual prowess or artistic excellence.¹¹ The latter is less often noted in the literature because it is harder to detect. Many powerful people use a blend of both forms of legitimization.

Gerontocracies legitimized an ascribed elite status for elders. Whether or not older people were the most suited to rule, the system had the benefit of being simple and hard to challenge.¹² The main function of elders was settling disputes.¹³ They were usually judges rather than political leaders. Necrocracies are governments still working according to the rules of a dead former leader, such as present-day North Korea and Iran. In 1977, anthropologist Margaret Mead was prescient of a significant change arising from technology. She identifies a shift from ‘postfigurative’ relationships in which the elders teach and dominate, to ‘cofigurative’ in which peer learning and power becomes accepted, towards ‘prefigurative’ where the young teach and often have power over their elders.¹⁴

Clan lineages (genealogical systems) are used to demonstrate that only those from certain aristocracies or nobilities,¹⁵ within class or caste hierarchies, can inherit the right to power,¹⁶ as in the Indian caste system.¹⁷ Anthropology has contributed robust methods for studying kinship, stemming from the work of Lewis Morgan (1818–1881), who determined systems of kinship such as ‘Hawaiian’, ‘Sudanese’ and ‘Eskimo’. Both Karl Marx and Engels used Morgan’s work to argue how elites appropriated property.¹⁸ Understanding language is central.¹⁹ Even in modern English a simple term such as ‘sister’ can mean sibling, any female relative, nun, nurse, and a feminist, trades union or Muslim colleague.

In more elaborate chieftaincies the chiefs use simple “traditions”²⁰ to affirm their power and avoid manual labour.²¹ Often they became, invented or discovered gods who they claimed to understand, and this legitimized their status.²² They assumed the right to communicate with their gods by carrying out certain rituals for which they demanded tribute from the commoners.²³ The gods made existence eternal, and eternity created the threat of eternal torture in the afterlife for anyone who disobeyed the gods and therefore their earthly chiefs.²⁴ Sometimes colonial rulers appropriated the role of the spiritual gods.²⁵ The “medicine men” and “witch doctors” were the precursors of modern “spiritual leaders”, who lend reciprocal support to the military and political leaders. Ancient chiefs seemingly used burial rituals to establish land rights through creating tombs in strategic places. Families could then be persuaded to defend the tombs of their ancestors, the gods who looked after them and this “sacred” land. This often entailed fighting against other tribes to defend the land which, by convenient coincidence, entailed fighting to defend the chiefs.

Once people start to believe in gods whose existence cannot be proven, it is easy for powerful people to get them to believe in other things without proof, not least that earthly kings are also godly kings. The Japanese Shinto religion was originally based on a simple belief that natural forces – earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis – were earthly manifestations of transient power from spiritual entities. People were persuaded to anthropomorphize these natural forces – to view them as having human-like qualities such as the ability to understand prayer. Shinto had no revelatory scriptures, doctrine or afterlife, and had no written records until the Chinese script arrived. But it ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING
• PART TWO: DOING
• PART THREE: USING
• Appendices – Tools and templates for research planning
• Glossary
• Internet sources
• References
• Index