First, the Big Man is foremost a manager,
an organizational entrepreneur, and only secondarily
a transactor of material goods. Second, under
the uncircumscribed conditions that obtained in New
Guinea, he does not become ethnographically visible
until crude population densities rise above 30/sq km
or so. The maximum crude densities under which he
is known to have operated were around 110 people/
sq km, at which point elements of de facto ascription
may be apparent in his rise to prominence. Given the
uncircumscribed status of most European prehistoric
environments, Big Man systems are thus plausible
analogical candidates for political society wherever
similar demographic regimes prevailed in the Neolithic
and metal ages.
Third, I have attempted to estimate the capacity
of Big-Man communities to mobilize collective
labour for certain types of political task. In contrast
to Sahlins’s assertion that a contradiction existed
between the Big Man and his followers, major collective
projects such as material distributions, performances
of singing and dancing, and monument
building involved them in a symbiotic relationship
based on their common interests in communicating
fighting capacity to other individuals and groups. It
is a graphic instance of Kienlin’s suggestion (this volume)
that there are subtle forms of power that build
up from “below”, often with a much stronger impact
on the individual’s life than “political” authority.
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