HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE
HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE

Interdisciplinary journal focusing primarily on sociological, political science and historical perspectives on the issue of long-term social processes and trends, modernization, globalization tendency and impacts.

The journal creates a broader platform for researches in the historical social sciences. Epistemological field is not strictly bounded, it is also meant to overlap with civilizationalism, cultural sociology and other related fields.

Historical Sociology is Open Access Journal and all published papers are available in the archive section. Open access journal means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press, cooperated with Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague.

Reviewed scientific journal issued twice a year (in June and December).

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HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE, Vol 18 No 1 (2026), 89–103

Article

Vývoj představ o klasifikaci předstátních společností

[The Development of Ideas About the Classification of Pre-State Societies]

Marek Německý

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/23363525.2026.6
published online: 21. 07. 2026

abstract

The topic of this essay is the development of ideas of socio-political typology of prestate societies. We began by pointing out the anchoring of these typologies in neo-evolutionist conceptions of development, particularly Sahlins and Service’s distinction between general and specific evolution. We then introduced Kalervo Oberg’s conceptions, which are significant in establishing the concept of chiefdom. This is followed by Elman Service’s interpretation of the classical sociopolitical typology, which distinguished between bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. Service’s typology, which classified societies on the basis of the complexity of their political organization, is contrasted with Morton Fried’s approach, which divided societies in terms of the criterion of social inequality into egalitarian, ranked, stratified, and state. The interpretation of the classifications of forms of sociopolitical organization is concluded by the approach of Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle, who chose the geographical size of a given political unit as the key criterion. We consider this last typology to be the most fruitful, with the advantage of avoiding controversial concepts such as tribe and classifying societies using more logical criteria that better capture the logic of the gradual increase in political complexity.

keywords: sociopolitical typology; chiefdom; sociopolitical complexity; social hierarchy; neoevolutionism; general evolution; specific evolution; Elman Service

references (21)

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ISSN: 1804-0616
E-ISSN: 2336-3525

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