tions as to what [political anthropology] includes or excludes or what
should be the basic methodological attack on the subject." This is less
true today. Joan Vincent Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions
and Trends ( 1990) offers a minutely detailed history, and an annual series,
edited by Myron Aronoff, with the general title Political Anthropology,
further helps provide an ongoing clarification of the subject. However,
political anthropology, like anthropology as a whole, remains immune
to precise definition. Cross-cultural studies of law and warfare may or
may not be included (they are not included in this book). Numerous
theoretical approaches compete with one another--cultural materialism,
structuralism, various Marxisms, neo-evolutionism, feminist revision-
ism, symbolic anthropology. . . . There are world-system perspectives
and perspectives that examine the actions of individuals. Cross-cultural
statistical analyses vie with historical studies.

Indeed, one problem with a book such as this is that it might give the
reader the impression that the field is more coherent than is actually the
case. Though a handful of researchers--notably Ronald Cohen, Abner
Cohen, F. G. Bailey, Joan Vincent, Myron Aronoff, and Peter Skalník--
are self-consciously political anthropologists, most articles in the field
are by cultural anthropologists writing about politics. The result is that
political anthropology exists largely through a potpourri of studies that
can be classified within a few broad themes only with some effort and
not a little artifice.

This said, a number of major thrusts of political anthropology can be
legitimately delineated. First, in the past the classification of political
systems was an important area of research. These studies, some of which
are now under attack, provided political anthropology with a basic
vocabulary and no few insights into the ways that systems work at
different levels of complexity. Second, the evolution of political systems
is a continuing fascination in the United States, though British and French
anthropologists often like to pretend that evolutionary theory died with
Lewis Henry Morgan. Third is the study of the structure and functions
of political systems in preindustrial societies. This point of view was
vehemently repudiated on both sides of the Atlantic because of its static
and ideal nature. After the initial burst of revolutionary rhetoric, there
emerged a general recognition that even the most dynamic of political
processes may take place within relatively stable structural boundaries.
In any case, political anthropology had its beginnings in this paradigm,
and many of its enduring works are structural-functionalist. Fourth, for
the last several decades the theoretical focus has been on the processes
of politics in preindustrial or developing societies. Perhaps the most

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