Henri J. M. Claessen
Encyclopedia
Henri J. M. Claessen is a famous cultural anthropologist
. He is Professor of Social Anthropology
at Leiden University
, an honorary member of several scholarly institutions (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Royal Institute for Languages and Anthropology of the Royal Academy of Sciences]); Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (University of Nijmegen); Honorary Lifetime Member of the IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences).
, history
and anthropology
at Amsterdam University (1950–1956). After his MA Claessen became a teacher of social geography in Sint Adelbert College (1956–1970), a period during which he prepared his PhD thesis under A. Köbben's supervision. He obtained his PhD at Amsterdam (1970). After that he was appointed Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Department of Anthropology. In 1984 he became full Professor there, in 1989–1991 he was the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences (Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen) and in 1994 he retired from the University. In 1981–1982 Claessen was Fellow in The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. From 1977–1994 he was Editor of Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. In this period Henri J. M. Claessen was also active in the IUAES
, which organization he served as Vice-President from 1982–1992.
, Tonga
, Dahomey
, Buganda
and the Realm of the Incas) where the emphasis came to be the central political organisation, which has remained an important theme in much of Claessen's work, lay at the basis of The Early State (1978) which he edited with Peter Skalník. In 1981, again with Peter Skalník, he edited The Study of the State. In later years he edited with M. Estellie Smith and Pieter van de Velde Development and Decline (1985). In this work the emphasis fell on evolutionary aspects of state formation. With Pieter van de Velde he edited in 1987 Early State Dynamics, and in 1991 Early State Economics. To connect matters of ideology
and legitimacy, he edited with Jarich G. Oosten in 1996 Ideology and the Formation of Early States. In his Structural Change was given a survey of evolution
and evolutionism
in Cultural anthropology
. With Renée Hagesteijn and Pieter van de Velde he edited a special issue of Social Evolution & History
under the title Thirty Years of Early State Research (2008). Apart from a number of publications in Dutch, he contributed articles in English on traditional Polynesia
in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, and articles on evolutionism in Social Evolution & History where he is a member of the Editorial Council.
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
. He is Professor of Social Anthropology
Social anthropology
Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...
at Leiden University
Leiden University
Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...
, an honorary member of several scholarly institutions (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Royal Institute for Languages and Anthropology of the Royal Academy of Sciences]); Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (University of Nijmegen); Honorary Lifetime Member of the IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences).
Background and education
He studied geographyGeography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
at Amsterdam University (1950–1956). After his MA Claessen became a teacher of social geography in Sint Adelbert College (1956–1970), a period during which he prepared his PhD thesis under A. Köbben's supervision. He obtained his PhD at Amsterdam (1970). After that he was appointed Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Department of Anthropology. In 1984 he became full Professor there, in 1989–1991 he was the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences (Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen) and in 1994 he retired from the University. In 1981–1982 Claessen was Fellow in The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. From 1977–1994 he was Editor of Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. In this period Henri J. M. Claessen was also active in the IUAES
IUAES
The IUAES is the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, the largest world forum of anthropologists and ethnologists, with members from more than fifty countries. Every five years, in different parts of the world, the IUAES sponsors a major Congress , gathering researchers...
, which organization he served as Vice-President from 1982–1992.
Early State Research
Henri Claessen has devoted much of his scholarly career to the study of Early States. The concept of the early state introduced by Henri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalník appears to have been the last among the great epoch-making political-anthropological theories of the 60s and 70s of the last century. Claessen's thesis, Of Princes and Peoples, a comparative study of the political organization of five Early States (TahitiTahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
, Tonga
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...
, Dahomey
Dahomey
Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...
, Buganda
Buganda
Buganda is a subnational kingdom within Uganda. The kingdom of the Ganda people, Buganda is the largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day Uganda, comprising all of Uganda's Central Region, including the Ugandan capital Kampala, with the exception of the disputed eastern Kayunga District...
and the Realm of the Incas) where the emphasis came to be the central political organisation, which has remained an important theme in much of Claessen's work, lay at the basis of The Early State (1978) which he edited with Peter Skalník. In 1981, again with Peter Skalník, he edited The Study of the State. In later years he edited with M. Estellie Smith and Pieter van de Velde Development and Decline (1985). In this work the emphasis fell on evolutionary aspects of state formation. With Pieter van de Velde he edited in 1987 Early State Dynamics, and in 1991 Early State Economics. To connect matters of ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
and legitimacy, he edited with Jarich G. Oosten in 1996 Ideology and the Formation of Early States. In his Structural Change was given a survey of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and evolutionism
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
in Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
. With Renée Hagesteijn and Pieter van de Velde he edited a special issue of Social Evolution & History
Social Evolution & History
Social Evolution & History is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the development of human societies in the past, present and future. In addition to original research articles, Social Evolution & History includes critical notes and a book review section. It is published in English twice a...
under the title Thirty Years of Early State Research (2008). Apart from a number of publications in Dutch, he contributed articles in English on traditional Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, and articles on evolutionism in Social Evolution & History where he is a member of the Editorial Council.
Complex Interaction Model
Claessen's school developed a "Complex Interaction Model" (CIM) to explain the evolution of sociopolitical organization and early state formation, according to the model factors such as ideology, economy and societal format become aligned in ways which favour state organisation.Not only the number of people was relevant, but also the number of people in relation to the means of production, and the spatial distribution of the population, which both played a role in the evolution of socio-political organization. We therefore coined the term societal format, which covers the number of people, possible population pressure, and spatial distribution)
Selected works
- 1978. The Early State: A Structural Approach. In Claessen, H. J. M., and Skalník, P. (eds.), The Early State (pp. 533–596). The Hague: Mouton.
- 1981. Specific Features of the African Early State. In Claessen, H. J. M., and Skalník, P. (eds.), The Study of the State (pp. 59–86). The Hague: Mouton.
- 1983. Evolutionary or not evolutionary; That's the question. Reviews in Anthropology 10: 21-24 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a923847760.
- 1984. The Internal Dynamics of the Early State. Current Anthropology 25: 365–379
- 1985. From the Franks to France; The Evolution of a Political Organization. In Claessen, H. J. M., van de Velde, P., and Smith, M. E. (eds.), Development and Decline (pp. 196–218). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
- 1989. Evolutionism in Development. Vienne Contributions to Ethnology and Anthropology 5: 231–247.
- 1991. Verdwenen koninkrijken en verloren beschavingen [Disappeared Kingdoms and Lost Civilizations]. Assen: Van Gorcum.
- 1996. Ideology and the formation of early states: Data from Polynesia. In. H. J.M. Claessen and J. G. Oosten (Eds.), Ideology and the formation of early states (pp. 339–358). Leiden: Brill.
- 2000. Structural Change; Evolution and Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology. Leiden: CNWS Press.
- 2002. Was the State Inevitable? Social Evolution & History 1(1) : 101–117.
- 2005. Early State Intricacies. Social Evolution & History 4(2): 151–158.
- 2006. with Martin A. van Bakel: Theme and variations. The development of differences in Polynesian socio-political organizations. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 162:218-268.
- 2008. Before the Early State and After. Social Evolution & History 7(1): 4–18 http://www.socionauki.ru/journal/articles/128473/.
- 2009. Learning and training. Education in eighteenth century traditional Polynesia. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkeknkunde 165: 324-356.
- 2010 On early states - structure, development, and fall. In: Social Evolution and History 9(1):3-51 http://www.socionauki.ru/journal/articles/126964/.
- Claessen, H. J. M. & P. Kloos. Evolutie en evolutionisme (1978).
- Claessen, H. J. M. & P. van de Velde. Een intercultureel model voor het feodalisme. In: Evomatica, ed. by Pieter van de Velde, pp. 203–215. Leiden: Institute of Cultural Anthropology Publication 42. (1981)
- Claessen, H. J. M. & P. van de Velde. Complexe interactie. Een proces-model ter verklaring van de evolutie van de sociaal-politieke organisatie. Antropologische Verkenningen 3:120-136.(1984)
See also
- Henri Claessen
- Bondarenko D. M.Dmitri BondarenkoDmitri Bondarenko , born 1968 in Moscow, is a Russian anthropologist, historian, and africanist. He has conducted field research in a number of African countries and in Russia...
Claessen H. J. M. In Great Russian EncyclopediaGreat Russian EncyclopediaThe Great Russian Encyclopedia is a new universal Russian encyclopedia in 30 volumes, published since 2004 by Bolšaja Rossijskaja Enciklopedija publisher. It is released under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences after 2002 Vladimir Putin's presidential decree № 1156.The chief editor...
. Vol. 14 / Ed. by Yu. M. Osipov. Moscow: RussianEncyclopedia, 2009. P. 220. - Dmitri BondarenkoDmitri BondarenkoDmitri Bondarenko , born 1968 in Moscow, is a Russian anthropologist, historian, and africanist. He has conducted field research in a number of African countries and in Russia...
, Andrey KorotayevAndrey KorotayevAndrey Korotayev is an anthropologist, economic historian, and sociologist, with major contributions to world-systems theory, cross-cultural studies, Near Eastern history, and mathematical modeling of social and economic macrodynamics.Education and career=Born in Moscow, Andrey Korotayev attended...
. 'Early State' in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Statistical Reanalysis of Henri J. M. Claessen’s Database. Cross-Cultural Research February 2003, vol. 37, no. 1, 105-132. - Jean-Claude Muller. Compte Rendus de Henri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalnik (Eds.): The Early State. New Babylon. Studies in the Social Sciences. Anthropologie et Sociétés, vol. 4, n° 1, 1980, p. 181-185.
- Carneiro's Circumscription TheoryCarneiro's Circumscription TheoryCarneiro's Circumscription Theory is an influential theory of the role of warfare in state formation in political anthropology, created by anthropologist Robert Carneiro .-Outline of the theory:...
- Surplus productSurplus productSurplus product is a concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's Elements of political economy...