Political Organization Questions to Explore:
To help you with any of the following questions, imagine a problem and think about how your culture might deal with it. Consider a variation among the following problems: stealing, murder, adultery, various disputes, or breaking any number of basic cultural norms.

Broadly speaking, is your political organization centralized or uncentralized?
Does your culture have leaders with “power” or “influence”?
How do they attain their position?
What role(s) do they serve?
How are major decisions made? (consensus, council, authority makes the decision?)
Is there a bureaucracy? If so, outline how it is organized.
How are disputes settled? (informal/formal? Negotiation/mediation/adjudication?)
Are there formal sanctions (laws)? If so, how are they enforced?
What informal sanctions (if any) are present (examples include: gossip, ridicule, ostracism, accusations/fear of witchcraft, other supernatural or religious factors)?
What cultures in the real world have similar characteristics of political organization? (see text)
How is this political organization integrated with other aspects of your culture? (Ask yourselves why another form of political organization might not work).
What other important aspects of political organization do you still need to work on?

One last note:
As part of this general discussion of social & political organization, you might also discuss different roles for people in the culture. You can work this out over the next week as well when we discuss political organization and the week after that as we begin our discussion of religion. Ultimately, different people in the culture should have different roles, such as:

• Political specialist (chief, president, etc.)
• Religious specialist
• Business Owner / CEO
• Warrior (this could be part of an age grade – see above)
• Etc.

Remember that industrialists will have more role specialization than foragers, as there is almost no division of labor or specialization among foragers.