Images of Power1

In: American anthropologist: AA, Band 74, Heft 3, S. 639-657

Abstract

This paper represents a systematic study of how power attributions are made in a village community. The diversity of power attributions by aggregates of individuals in the community was found to be considerable, suggesting the possibility of fallacious results if social anthropologists base their analysis of socio‐political structures upon the accounts of a limited number of persons Two mathematical models, one static, one dynamic are introduced to reduce the diversity of power cognitions and to show the fruitfulness of jointly analyzing the conceptions of every adult member of a community.