Corporations and society: The social anthropology of collective action

Smith, M.G.

Aldine Pub. Co.

Few would doubt that social science is in serious need of a new conceptual framework for the study of human organizations. For some time now such a framework has been sought in the notion that societies are functional systems, in which the individual sectors--economy, religion, government and so on--can be seen as subsystems dependent on each other and integrated within a whole. But in spite of the major advances in research which modern systems theory has brought about, it is based inevitably on a priori assumptions which are often at variance with the facts, or require the facts to be interpreted in a special way to fit the theory. In this book Smith puts forward an alternative framework, by developing the concept of the corporation. While most people nowadays think of corporations as large industrial enterprises, Smith employs the term in its older, Common Law sense of an established social unit. By studying the components of social life in this way, as discrete entities rather than as parts of a cohering system, corporation theory is able to treat social phenomena empirically and so avoid the unverifiable ideology-laden postulates of the traditional system-model. Corporations and Society is made up principally of key articles written by Smith over several decades. To these have been added three newly written, unpublished pieces of which the last--a penetrating essay on the Caribbean--is one of the longest in the book. Covering such wide-ranging topics as lineage systems, government, stratification, law, race relations and pluralism, these essays by a distinguished anthropologist show how extensively, and with what power of analysis, the theory can be applied.

Corporations and Society: The Social Anthropology of Collective Action

Business & Money

Biography & History

Routledge

Government In Kano, 1350-1950

Reference

Corporations and society

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Duckworth

This history of the African kingdom that included the famous trans-Saharan trading city of Kano is the third in the late M. G. Smith’s series of histories of the Hausa-Fulani kingdoms in West Africa. Combining the approaches of social anthropology and history, Smith provides a fascinating account of this kingdom’s complex political and administrative organization from medieval times to the threshold of Nigerian independence.The book relies on written sources in Arabic, Hausa, and English, but it is supplemented by in-depth interviews with Fulani rulers and councilors who were intimately familiar with the organization of the Muslim emirate of Kano before the British arrived in 1903. In the final chapter, Smith continues his analytical inquiry, begun in his earlier books, into the processes of change in political units.

Government In Kano, 1350-1950 (African States and Societies in History)

History

Africa

Westview Press

Pluralism, Politics And Ideology In The Creole Caribbean

Research Institute for the Study of Man

The study of social structure

Few would doubt that social science is in serious need of a new conceptual framework for the study of human organizations. For some time now such a framework has been sought in the notion that societies are functional systems, in which the individual sectors--economy, religion, government and so on--can be seen as subsystems dependent on each other and integrated within a whole. But in spite of the major advances in research which modern systems theory has brought about, it is based inevitably on a priori assumptions which are often at variance with the facts, or require the facts to be interpreted in a special way to fit the theory.In this book Smith puts forward an alternative framework, by developing the concept of the corporation. While most people nowadays think of corporations as large industrial enterprises, Smith employs the term in its older, Common Law sense of an established social unit. By studying the components of social life in this way, as discrete entities rather than as parts of a cohering system, corporation theory is able to treat social phenomena empirically and so avoid the unverifiable ideology-laden postulates of the traditional system-model.Corporations and Society is made up principally of key articles written by Smith over several decades. To these have been added three newly written, unpublished pieces of which the last--a penetrating essay on the Caribbean--is one of the longest in the book. Covering such wide-ranging topics as lineage systems, government, stratification, law, race relations and pluralism, these essays by a distinguished anthropologist show how extensively, and with what power of analysis, the theory can be applied.

Anthropology

<p><p>Originally published in 1960, this is a details study of the successive forms of government in the Hausa chiefdom of Zaria in Northern Nigeria. It presents a comparative analysis of the political organization and development of Zaria under successive Habe, Fulani and British suzerains. The book tackles the problems of political history and theory from an anthropological point of view, distinguishing governmental forms, functions and modes, as well as elucidating necessary regularities within the processes of political change.</p></p>

Government in Zazzau: 1800-1950 (African Ethnographic Studies of the 20th Century)

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Books by Smith, M.G.