Stateless society

A society without a centralized political authority exercising sovereign rule over its territory and population. Political order is maintained through other institutions, relationships, and forms of authority.

Segmentary lineage: A social organization in which groups defined by descent combine or divide through overlapping kinship ties. Descent groups can coordinate collective action and balance disputes without a central ruler.
Nuer people: A Nilotic people of South Sudan whose social organization has often been analyzed through segmentary lineage. E. E. Evans-Pritchard's study made Nuer political organization a classic stateless-society case.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard: A British social anthropologist known for ethnographic studies of African societies, especially the Nuer. His account of Nuer political organization shaped classic analysis of societies without centralized government.
State: A political organization that claims sovereign authority over a territory and its population. The absence of this centralized sovereign authority defines the concept.
Legal pluralism: The coexistence of multiple legal orders within a society. Customary, religious, and other legal orders can operate without a single state monopoly.
Customary law: Rules and practices that a community recognizes as governing conduct and resolving disputes. Shared norms can guide behavior and settle conflicts without state courts.
Tiv people: A people of central Nigeria whose traditional political organization relied heavily on kinship and councils. Tiv institutions illustrate how lineage and local assemblies can govern without a central state.
Political anthropology: The study of political processes, authority, power, and governance across human societies. This field compares how political order works both inside and outside states.
Anarchism: A political philosophy advocating society without coercive hierarchies, especially the state. A stateless society is an institutional description, not necessarily an anarchist political ideal.
Political authority: The recognized power to make decisions and expect compliance within a social or political group. Stateless societies show that authority can exist without sovereign state institutions.

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AnationalismRelated: Anationalism rejects national divisions, but does not by itself require statelessness.