Premium
The role of the family in authority systems: A cross‐cultural application of stimulus‐generalization theory
Author(s) -
Levine Robert A.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830050403
Subject(s) - politics , stateless protocol , ethnography , social psychology , epistemology , sociology , cultural anthropology , generalization , field (mathematics) , political anthropology , psychology , anthropology , political science , computer science , mathematics , law , pure mathematics , philosophy , computer network , network packet
Psychoanalytically oriented social scientists have proposed a “projective” view of the political system in which early family relationships serve as models for adult political behavior. Anthropological field reports indicate that the extension of the family idiom to political relationships is widespread in non‐Western cultures, particularly those with stateless political systems. Here the author proposes to show the relevance of social‐psychological theories to political anthropology, indicating that cross‐cultural testing of the derived hypotheses is feasible using available ethnographic evidence.