Elman Service
Elman Service | |
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Born | |
Died | November 14, 1996 | (aged 81)
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Columbia University University of Michigan |
Scientific career | |
Fields | cultural anthropologist |
Military Career | |
Allegiance | Spanish Republic United States of America |
Service/ | International Brigades United States Army |
Unit | The "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade |
Battles/wars | Spanish Civil War World War II |
Part of a series on |
Political and legal anthropology |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
Elman Rogers Service (May 18, 1915 – November 14, 1996) was an American cultural anthropologist.
Biography
He was born on May 18, 1915, in
During his time studying at the University of Michigan, Service joined the
Work
Elman Service researched
He was the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the American Anthropological Association.
Theories
In 1962, Elman Service published his four classifications of the stages of social evolution and political organizations: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.
He also developed the "managerial benefits" theory, which states that chiefdom-like society developed because of the apparent benefits of centralized leadership. The leader provides benefits to their followers, which, over time, become more complex, benefiting the whole chiefdom society. This keeps the leader in power, and allows the bureaucratic organization to grow.
Service also advanced an integration theory. He believed that early civilizations were not stratified based on property and unequal access to resources, but instead based on unequal political power. He believed there were no true class conflicts, but only power struggles between the political elite in early civilizations. The integration part of this theory was that monuments were created through volunteering, not the leaders forcing it upon the populace.
Elman Service also coined what he called “Law of Evolutionary Potential” in relation to cultural evolution. This law posited that the more specialized and adapted a form in a given evolutionary stage, the smaller its potential for passing on to the next stage.[1]
Books by Elman Service
- Tobati: Paraguayan Town (1954)
- A Profile of Primitive Culture (1958)
- Evolution and Culture (with M.D. Sahlins) (1960)
- Primitive Social Organization (1962)
- Profiles in Ethnology (1963)
- The Hunters (1966)
- Cultural Evolutionism (1971)
- Origins of the State and Civilization (1975)
- A Century of Controversy, Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960 (1985)
Bibliography
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060616094717/http://bruceowen.com/emciv/34104s15.htm
- http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9066882
- http://www.indiana.edu/~ancient/6notes.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20050118101236/http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/rug/AR210/circles/project/technol.htm
- https://web.archive.org/web/20051102130808/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/service_elman.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060525075948/http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/fa/american_ethnological_society.pdf
References
- ISSN 0002-7294.