Ed. by N. N. Kradin. Vladivostok: Publishing House of the Far Eastern Federal University, 2012. 464 p.

This peer-reviewed publication is a collection of reports from the International Conference on Political Anthropology, held on April 16-17, 2012 in Vladivostok. Its subjects are extremely diverse: from general problems of political anthropology (N. N. Kradin), the theory of the (early) state (D. M. Bondarenko, X. Klassen, P. Skalnik), chiefdom (L. E. Grinin and A.V. Korotaev) to the political evolution of specific societies (D. D. Belyaev), modern Russia (A. A. Korotaev).E. Savchenko), the phenomenon of Alexander Nevsky (Yu. V. Krivosheev and R. A. Sokolov), the economic and cultural type of cattle breeders among Indian Rajputs (E. N. Uspenskaya). This coverage of the material shows the current state of political anthropology, the definition of which was proposed by the editor of the collection corresponding member. RAS N. N. Kradin in the article " Modern ten-

"an anthropological discipline that studies behavior, political and power institutions in the anthropological sphere using ethnographic methods" (p. 233).

This understanding of political anthropology is clarified by pointing out that its main method of obtaining data is inclusive observation, "when a scientist settles among the studied group (people, tribe, community) and for a long time records all aspects of the life of the culture under study" (pp. 230-231). If this is so, then the study of the genesis of the state and, more broadly, any political institutions of primitive, ancient, medieval, or Modern European history-political anthropology-is not available: how can one settle, for example, among the ancient Romans? And fix all aspects of their life, if the selection of these aspects is the result of the researcher's interpretation of the social structure, and therefore changes in each epoch?

At the same time, A. M. Kuznetsov ("Political Man" between political anthropology and the anthropology of politics") calls for the development of the anthropology of politics - a new discipline designed to study the "problem of man in power and politics" in the context of the transformation of politics into an independent sphere of society (Modern and Modern times) and the active interaction of various levels of development modern societies, states, nations, ethnic, religious, and cultural communities.

Conference proceedings are published in alphabetical order. This organization of data leaves two possibilities: to retell the main content of each article in the same order, or to highlight the key topics of political anthropology and their coverage in the collection; in the review, the second one is chosen, which is due to the reviewer's need to systematize the data.

Uvarov P. Yu. ("Was there a Eurasian Middle Ages? Reflections on the "medieval" volume of World History) summed up the features of the Middle Ages as an era different from both ancient and Modern times: the increased role of the Great Steppe, or the constant military threat from nomadic pastoralists in the Old World; the dominance of cavalry over infantry on the battlefields (both features are due to technological inventions); the dominance of world religions. Uvarov sees the reasons for the success of Western Europe in Modern times as a combination of a number of factors from medieval, feudal times: a favorable geographical location, the absence of nomadic neighbors; the independent role of the Catholic Church as a unifying principle that opposed secular political power; the dominance of the seigniory with a church parish and a peasant community, rather than royal or imperial power at the local level level. It was these factors that allowed the development of medieval cities, secular bureaucracies, parliaments, universities, and the preservation of Roman law.

D. M. Bondarenko ("The state and the ideology of kinship"), developing the idea of alternatives to the state, emphasizes the absence of "direct correspondence between socio-political (transition to the state) and ideological (departure from the ideology of kinship) processes" (p. 36): the ideology of kinship can be preserved in states or form the foundation of society, as in the case of with the Kingdom of Benin of the 13th-19th centuries P. Turchin (USA) ("Social Tipping Points and Trend Reversals: a Historical Approach") makes another attempt to measure the historical dynamics of the development of societies of the past - to develop a cliometry.

V. V. Bocharov ("Power: a Man and a woman") proves that " at the dawn of human history, there was a certain balance between the power and managerial functions performed by the sexes. If men were engaged in politics at the level of society, then women were at home" (p. 43). Among the mechanisms for men to gain power from women, the researcher names marriage, which made a man a full-fledged member of society, repeated marriages as "social rejuvenation" (p. 48) for leaders who blocked access to marriage for the age class of young people, marriages with sisters-guardians of power, polygyny-a demonstration of the "sacred power of the archaic leader" (p. 52).. In the youth-military culture, celibacy was cultivated as serving a certain higher goal and violence against women as a manifestation of boldness. Many archaic patterns of behavior still apply today.

V. A. Lyn'sha ("The Early K. A. Wittfogel on the Role of the Natural factor in history") reconstructs K. A. Wittfogel's quite relevant Marxist dialectical concept of the correlation of natural and social productive forces, which has changed in the course of historical development, but could not and will not lead to the complete displacement of the former, i.e., the power of man over society. nature has grown, but it has never become and will never become all-encompassing.

A number of articles in the collection are devoted to the theory of political evolution and political organization. ("Restriction Theory: clarification, expansion and new formulation") refines the military theory of the origin of the state, complementing the factor of limiting some natural resources, primarily fertile land, with the concentration of other natural resources, in particular fish in rivers such as Egypt or the Niger, and/or birds in the Fayum oasis.

L. E. Grinin and A.V. Korotaev ("Chiefdoms and their Analogs: towards a typology of medium-complex societies") continue to develop the theory of multilinear evolution, the concept of alternatives to social evolution and medium-complex societies, introducing the concepts of analogs of chiefdom and chiefdom-like polities. The definition of chiefdom-like polities on page 97 suggests that they were "hierarchically organized and relatively centralized societies of moderate complexity", characterized by a population of "several hundred to several thousand people", independence, and the presence of a leader with real power. What is the difference between a chiefdom and a chiefdom-like polity is not clear from the article.

However, the authors ' attention is focused on analogs of chiefdoms - "societies similar to chiefdom-like polities in complexity, size and functions, or spatially organized corporations that do not have any of the characteristics of the former: hierarchy, level of centralization, the presence of a formal leader, an organized system of control over resources, political independence, etc." (p. 98). Among the analogs of the chiefdom, L. E. Grinin and A. V. Korotaev distinguish settlement and corporate types, subdividing the former into single-settlement and multi-settlement analogs. Among other things, they include ancient Greek polis as single-settlement analogues.

The concept of an analog of a chiefdom proposed by researchers is constructed similar to the concept of an analog of an early state formulated by L. E. Grinin earlier-by means of a negative definition ("they do not have the characteristics of a chiefdom") and an indication of the functions performed, i.e. a functional analogy. This raises an intractable question: why was the ancient Greek polis called by L. E. Grinin both an analog of the early state (Grinin, 2011, p. 252) and an analog of the chiefdom? Polis as a single-settlement type of analog is also a dubious typology, since it is well known that Sparta consisted of five villages, and Athens had two urban centers-Athens and Piraeus.

Nevertheless, the notion of early state analogs is warmly welcomed by X. In his book"The Theory of the Early State Today", published under the editorship of P. Klassen (The Netherlands), which essentially repeats the provisions of the collective monograph published under his and P. Skalnik's editorship in 1978, with very minor changes (Claessen and Skalnik, 1978). On the perception and development of the theory of the early state in political anthropology over the past thirty years, writes P. Skalnik (Czech Republic) ("The concept of the early State in anthropological theory").

Some articles in the collection relate to the socio-political organization of individual communities. Thus, D. D. Belyaev ("Once again on the question of the socio-political organization of the Olmec archaeological culture") proves that the communities of the Olmec culture were not states, but complex chiefdoms (San Lorenzo, La Venta), and in the mountainous regions of Mesoamerica at the turn of the 2nd-1st millennium BC there were complex communities of the Olmec culture. community associations.

Corresponding member. A.V. Golovnev ("Nordism and Ordism in Northern Eurasia") shows the interaction of mobile cultures of northern mariners and rivermen (Normans, Novgorodians and their Ushkuyniks) with the southern nomadic traditions of the" Great Steppe "from the Scythians and Sarmatians through the Huns and Turks to the Mongols, the Golden Horde and the Muscovite Kingdom, which led to the formation of a synthetic culture of the "Great Steppe". Russian culture.

Yu. V. Latushko ("Was the Hawaiian state a state?") connects the emergence of the state in Hawaii with the activities of Kamehameha I at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries and notes the theoretical indistinguishability of complex chiefdoms from early states in the concept of X. Klassen and P. Skalnik [Claessen and Skalnik, 1978].

V. A. Popov ("Social and communicative networks as a factor of secondary politogenesis in pre-colonial Tropical Africa") using the example of socio-communicative network structures, in particular "jam communities" (patronyms), in pre-colonial Tropical Africa, he shows that all concepts of stateless or alternative development fit into the model of secondary politogenesis, and "non-hierarchical complex societies" are the same oxymoron as "non-hierarchical power" (p. 328)..

T. D. Skrynnikova ("Ancient Turkic roots of the ruling elite of the Mongol Empire") suggests that in the second half of the 12th century there was a struggle on the territory of Mongolia

two ethnic groups of Mongols and Turks named after K. U. Torlanbayev (Kazakhstan) ("On the question of tribal rule among the Turks") reflects on the ways of inheritance in the Turkic khaganates.

E. N. Uspenskaya connects the occupation of cattle breeding with management in the Indian caste system on the example of the Rajput caste ("From traditional cattle breeders to Kshatriyas, or economic and cultural type as the basis of Indian caste status").

Some articles are devoted to nomadic societies. S. A. Nefedov ("Formation of nomadic society: factor analysis") identifies three factors in the formation of a nomadic society: geographical (the steppe predetermined cattle breeding), technological (the bridle set caused horsemanship and nomadism) and demographic (relative overpopulation led to the traditions of military democracy). S. A. Vasyutin ("Turkic and Uyghur khaganates: two paths of political development") E. V. Vdovchenkov hypothesizes that the Turkic khaganates were complex and super-complex chiefdoms, while the Uyghur Khaganate was more of a state formation with a written language, a management system, and urban planning. P. K. Dashkovsky and I. A. Meikshan ("Some features of elite development in nomadic societies of Southern Siberia and Central Asia in antiquity and the Middle Ages") call for combining the analysis of written and archaeological sources in the analysis of nomadic societies ' elites.

Five articles are devoted to Russian history, including modern ones. A. E. Savchenko ("State efficiency in Russia in the mid-1950s-2000s: the factor of the "oil curse") It reveals an inversely proportional dependence of the efficiency of the Soviet / Russian state on the method of resource mobilization, in particular on the strengthening of the role of an external source of raw material sales, and a combination of objective factors in the form of exhaustion of human resources in the 1960s with conjunctural ones in the form of establishing agreements within the Soviet nomenclature under L. I. Brezhnev and the influx of petrodollars in the disintegration of Soviet statehood.

G. Derlugyan (USA) ("The Islamic Non-factor in the North Caucasus") It shows that Islam "is neither an independent and integral factor, much less the cause of the current state of affairs in the North Caucasus" (p.158).

Two articles by Yu. V. Krivosheev and R. A. Sokolov ("The phenomenon of Alexander Nevsky in the historical and modern ideology of power and public consciousness"; "Tatar-Mongols in S. M. Eisenstein's film" Alexander Nevsky": ideological and political paradigms of Soviet pre - war culture and Science") show the change in the image of Alexander Nevsky from the era of Peter the Great I to the beginning of the XXI century and reconstruct the history of the script of S. Eisenstein's film "Alexander Nevsky" in relation to the place of the Tatar-Mongols in it.

A. A. Tishkin ("Modern sacralization of archaeological sites in Central Asia") based on the examples of excavations on the Wukok Plateau (Russia) and the Nalingaotu monument in Shaanxi Province (China) connects their transformation into objects of worship with the changed socio-political conditions in Russia and China, including the desire of various social forces (both individual and individual). In the regions of Central Asia under consideration, it is necessary to maximize the benefits of promoting cult building, the growth of neo-paganism and a number of local cults, the decline in educational levels and the lack of prospects for self-realization.

N. S. Rozov ("Philosophical and anthropological foundations of political and legal regulation of the future legal order") justifies the need to create a multi-level legal and judicial system for the preservation and development of humanity as a whole and all its member communities in particular.

Thus, the reviewed collection contains extremely diverse content and heterogeneous coverage of the material. It is necessary for all those interested in history, political science, cultural studies, anthropology and ethnography to understand the origin, development and forms of the state, the specifics of the perception of power and historical figures, the development of a periodization of world history, and understanding the functioning of modern science and Russian society.

list of literature

Grinin L. E. State and historical process. The era of state formation: General context of social evolution in the formation of the state. 2nd ed., reprint. Moscow: URSS-LKI Publishing House, 2011. Clacsscn H.J.M., Skalnik P. (cds.). The Early State. The Hague: Mouton, 1978.

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