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The circumscription theory is a theory of the role of warfare in
state formation State formation is the process of the development of a centralized government structure in a situation where one did not exist prior to its development. State formation has been a study of many disciplines of the social sciences for a number of ...
in
political anthropology Political anthropology is the comparative study of politics in a broad range of historical, social, and cultural settings. History of political anthropology Origins Political anthropology has its roots in the 19th century. At that time, thinkers ...
, created by anthropologist
Robert Carneiro Robert Leonard Carneiro (June 4, 1927 – June 24, 2020) was an American anthropologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History. His Circumscription Theory explains how early political states may have formed as a result of interacti ...
. The theory has been summarized in one sentence by Schacht: “In areas of circumscribed agricultural land,
population pressure Population pressure, a term summarizing the stress brought about by an excessive population density and its consequences, is used both in conjunction with human overpopulation and with other animal populations that suffer from too many individuals ...
led to warfare that resulted in the evolution of the state”. The more circumscribed an agricultural area is, Carneiro argues, the sooner it politically unifies.


Outline of the theory

The theory begins with some assumptions. Warfare usually disperses people rather than uniting them. Environmental circumscription occurs when an area of productive agricultural land is surrounded by a less productive area such as the mountains, desert, or sea. Application of extensive agriculture would bring severely diminishing returns. If there is no environmental circumscription, then losers in a war can migrate out from the region and settle somewhere else. If there is environmental circumscription, then losers in warfare are forced to submit to their conquerors, because migration is not an option and the populations of the conquered and conqueror are united. The new state organization strives to alleviate the population pressure by increasing the productive capacity of agricultural land through, for instance, more intensive cultivation using irrigation.


Primary and secondary state development

''Primary state development'' occurred in the six original states of the Nile Valley, Peru, Mesoamerican, Yellow River Valley China, Indus River Valley, and Mesopotamia. ''Secondary state development'' occurred in states that developed from contact with already existing states. Primary state development occurred in areas with environmental circumscription. The presumption, under the Carneiro Hypothesis, is that agricultural intensification, and the social coordination and coercion necessary to achieve this end was a result of warfare in which vanquished populations could not disperse; the coercive coordination necessary for increased production of surplus is, under Carneiro's hypothesis, a causal factor in the origins of the State. For example, the mountainous river valleys of Peru which descend to the Pacific coast were severely environmentally circumscribed. Amazonian populations could always disperse and maintain sparse contact with other, potentially hostile, neighbors, whereas Andean coastal populations could not.


Criticism

Carneiro's theory has been criticized by the Dutch "early state school" emerging in the 1970s around cultural anthropologist Henri J.M. Claessen, on the ground that considerable contrary evidence can be found to Carneiro's theory. There are also cases of circumscribed environments and violent cultures which have failed to develop states, for example in the narrow highland valleys of interior Papua New Guinea, or the north west Pacific coastlines of North America. Also for example, the formation of some early states in East Africa, Sri Lanka, and Polynesia do not easily fit with Carneiro's model. Hence Claessen's school developed a "complex interaction model" to explain early state formation, in which factors such as ecology, social and demographic structures, economic conditions, conflicts, and ideology become aligned in ways which favour state organisation.


Later development and revision

The theory has since been applied to many other contexts, with some arguing it can be applied globally.One of the leading experts on
world-systems theory World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective)Immanuel Wallerstein, (2004), "World-systems Analysis." In ''World System History'', ed. George Modelski, in ''Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems'' (E ...
, Christopher Chase-Dunn, noted in 1990 that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system (Chase-Dunn, C. (1990). World-state formation: historical processes and emergent necessity. Political Geography Quarterly, 9(2), 108-130).
Carneiro has since also revised his theory in various ways. He has argued that population ''concentration'' can act as a lower level impetus for tribal conflict than geographic circumscription. He has also argued that, in addition to the necessities of conquest, a more important reason for creation of chiefdoms was the rise of war chiefs who use their military loyalists to take over a group of villages and become
paramount chiefs A paramount chief is the English-language designation for the highest-level political leader in a regional or local polity or country administered politically with a chief-based system. This term is used occasionally in anthropological and arch ...
.Carneiro, Robert. 2012
The Circumscription Theory: A Clarification, Amplification, and Reformulation
Social Evolution & History 11(2): 5–30


References


Bibliography

* {{cite journal , last1 = Carneiro , first1 = R. L. , year = 1970 , title = A Theory of the Origin of the State , journal = Science , volume = 169 , issue = 3947, pages = 733–738 , pmid = 17820299 , doi = 10.1126/science.169.3947.733 , bibcode = 1970Sci...169..733C , s2cid = 11536431 * Carneiro, R. L. ''The Muse of History and the Science of Culture''. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2000. * Lewellen, Ted C. 1992. ''Political anthropology: An Introduction'', Second Edition. Westport Connecticut, London: Bergin and Garvey, pp. 54–55. * Claessen, H. J. M, ''Structural change; evolution and evolutionism in cultural anthropology''. Leyden: CNWS, 2000


External links


Video on Carneiro's Circumscription Theory
Cultural anthropology Historical determinism Political theories Theories of history Anthropological theories Political anthropology Environmental humanities Geopolitics