Paper long abstract:

Departing from the contention found in postcolonial studies that anthropology had a deep ideological and epistemological connection to colonialism and Western imperialism, I see in the authoritarian state an older, deeper and more pervasive anthropological paradigm that has inspired and constrained anthropological theory during the 20th century. I shall explain this paradigm based on the concepts of corporateness, transcendence, mechanical determinism, and hierarchy. I will try and show that a paradigm shift in anthropological theory is necessary and possible if the concepts of complexity,disorder and randomization become preliminaries to a construction of an anthropological theory of collective life. This major shift is predicated from considerations on anarchy and anarchism as enduring dimensions of human behavior.