barriomulas.com - Lineage, the State, and Punishment

<br>While not living up to the expectations of its title, "Primitive Government" by Lucy Mair did succeed in bringing up a primitive concept that is often forgotten in the face of modern political debate; that of lineages. Mair states that "Lineages have corporate rights in property; they consider themselves to be injured as a body if one of their members is injured, they support compensation, and the compensation is shared among them." (p. 37) Later, Mair discusses the "right of revenge for homicide... cases of homicide were discussed between the lineages involved, and the killer was handed over by his kin if they admitted his guilt." There existed "diplomatic settlement of disputes by agreement between heads of lineages on the payment of compensation" (p. 155) The concept is fascinating, for due to the absence of a formal state or ruling power, order was maintained by an invisible rule of lineage compensation.

At one time or another, the state stepped in and - in a sense - nationalized the role of victim. Prior to this, "all accusations were made by he individuals who consider themselves injured." (p. 157) No longer were crimes exclusively committed against individuals, but the wrong doings of law breakers were considered to be offenses against the collectives. In turn, it was the response of the state to implement some sort of punishment. Mair continues, "Primitive societies had very little idea of offenses against the collectivity which cannot be made good by restitution but must be deal with by the infliction of punishment."(p. 156) The role of the state as the collective victim can further be seen in the fact hat "many of our crimes are acts of disobedience to the government but are not in themselves very heinous."(p. 157)

Of course with the rise of white collar crime, terrorism, cyber crimes, vandalism of public property, intellectual property disputes, and piracy it is increasingly difficult to identify the individual "victims", the concept of allowing the victim or their family to partake in the decision making process on what type of compensation is to be requested or what type of punishment is to be dealt is indeed interesting. Otherwise as Mair notes that it is not true that "certain actions wrong the whole of society, but rather from the specific claim of rulers to assert their powers." (p. 160)