酋邦概念与国家探源——埃尔曼·塞维斯《国家与文明的起源》导读

Concept of the Chiefdom and Origin of the State:Introduction to E.R. Service's Origin of the State and Civilization

酋邦是社会进化论的一个类型或一个发展阶段,类似于生物进化中爬行类和哺乳类概念。社会演进的趋势是用某些"主导类型"或"主导阶段"来表示的。并非所有酋邦都能演进到国家,国家也不一定从最特化的酋邦中产生。文化进化论研究社会发展的规律和通则,而历史学研究则关注具体事件和对象的线性过程。酋邦是介于平等社会和国家之间的各种世袭不平等社会。早期国家的诞生普遍见证了征服和吞并,为了管理先前各自为政的独立酋邦,国家必然以任命的官僚体制来取而代之。

Chiefdom is a social type or stage defined by New Evolutionalism, analogues to the terms such as amphibia, reptile and mammal in evolutionary biology. The trend of social evolution is characterized by some dominant types or stages. Not all chiefdoms could evolve to the state and early states might not ne- cessarily be developed from highly specialized chiefdom. Social evolutionary research explores the law and generalization of social development, whereas historic research mainly focuses on unilineal or diachronical process. Chiefdom represents various societies with hereditary inequality between segmentary tribe and the state. The emergence of early states always witnesses conquest and annex. In order to administrate previous independent chiefdoms, new-born kingdoms had to replace these rulers with mandated bureaucracy.