ζῶον ἐλεύθερον

If the disciplinary construction of an area of knowledge such as Anthropology –seminal orbit regarding idea of “otherhood”, and the experience, the interaction between us and the others– couldn't help but be marked by attracting more or less precise attention in relation to the relativization of the cultural absolutes over which its analytical instruments were formulated, there is no systemic solidification of such an overbearing reach as the one brought forth by “contextual criticism” which has, from 1960, inaugurated the so-called postmodern paradigm. From this moment on, the close scrutiny brought upon the epistemic position, is too undergone by a cultural scrutiny, in a process of reconstruction which goes from author to actor (Geertz, 1989). This generates an holistic horizon for its understanding that infra-explores the castling process, given the limits of mere questioning or of the discipline's open self-reprobation. Maybe this phenomenon may be able to explain, at least partially, the general lack of positive structural alternatives to the traditional socio-cultural interpretative models, specially opposite the idealist drift which, in the words of Maurice Bloch (2005: 15), «leads to the incoherence of the [anthropological] subject and to its inability to co-operate with other subjects which are not similarly ashamed to be studying the phenomenon Homo sapiens»; in such terms the problem duoubles by isolating, in an impervious circuit, a huge heritage of anthropological considerations based on the study of cultural semiosis as a characteristic human element which, by definition, is not only pertinent also for the macro-structural explanation of human groups, its societies, cultures and history, but too, is absolutely necessary.

For the case of Political Anthropology there has hardly been an energetic contestation to the foundational postulates which position in a determinist nature this branch of Anthropology within the backbone of the State, and specially, on the statalizing processes which, deemed as processes and by such logic associated to a notion of directionality, have conditioned the vision of such particular phenomenon of social articulation as the natural objective of any social articulation in the course of History. Undoubtedly, this allows us to detect a verticalist hegemonic ideology rooted by an atavistic automatism in the symbolic justificative construction (ritualization, euphemization, etc.) of authority's fossilization in political institutions of power, which, in fact, refers to the historical process which allows for the ossification of the social fracture leading to the State. That is to say: the configuration of a certain reality, results in certain perception of reality, a starting point which only grows a dangerous character insofar we add an universalizing component/intention, but overall, as we mentioned before, there is an absence of a contextual deconstruction of the position of the author and his or her analytical tools.

Before this framework, the study of non-statal organizations has been traditionally configurated as an area of interest deemed as eminentely perifocal and subordinated to the cardinal aim of unravelling statization: such is its use in the main interpretative social theories valid nowadays, from the functional-structuralist discourses to the neo-evolutionists and the different marxisms (Service, 1962; Fried, 1967; Johnson y Earle, 2003; etc.). Finally, the main collateral effect that has brought forth this perspective, has been the idealization of the statal and non-statal social articulations in a mutually exclusive relation, a sort of functional synecdoche whose main lines has even encapsulated the “Clastrian school” which constitutes almost on its own the anthropological horizontalist counter-proposal to revert the polarity of the problematic –and, with it, the naturalization of the State as human state– (Clastres, 2010; 2009; 2001), but which runs the risk of obscuring a much complex practical casuistry, a more plastic reality in which there is a verification of a more or less invisibilized structural imbrication of non-statal configurations and archipelagos within an institutional statalized tissue. It was Wolf which referred precisely to this phenomenon in 1980, despite, once more, his conceptual tools having been formulated from a statist perspective which conditioned an approach that didn't solve the necessary theoretical systematization of institutions, non-statal logics and praxis –even counter-statal–, and its guidelines of immanence, latency and potentiality.

However, there are always streaks. Maybe the most fertile one in the last few years was the one which, fleeing from the rigidity of the aprioristic tipologies in fashion, centers the issue in the phenomenic relations between power, authority and dominion, approaching the concrete processes of empowerment from a perspective which owes much to the notions of “power dynamics” (sensu Foucault, 1968; 1979; etc.) and that of dialogic post-structuralist “praxis” brilliantly synthesized by Pierre Bourdieu (1972; 2007). In this sense, the works of anthropologists such as John Gledhill (i. e. 2000) or James C. Scott (1979; 1985; 2009; etc.) are virtually classic references despite their relatively recent emergence. However, step by step there are certain studies joining these, from disciplinary and applied contexts, less linked in their core to a strict ethnography, and which begin to widen the possibilities of a theoretical social formulation on a macro level (vid. Nielsen, 2006). In good part, and partly aside, it is difficult to separate this academic germination from the “return of the socialist pendulum” which beggining around 1989-1994 has been menacing ever more evidently from the ideological terrain of ethical politics, the marxist statist agendas opposite the counter-statist left, and in this manner, an anarchist Anthropology emerges (Barclay, 1982; 1997; 2003; Morris, 2005; Graeber, 2001; 2011a; 2011b; etc.) and seeks to actively recover, using Pierre Clastre's bridgehead, the intellectual tradition as well as the programmatic intention of academics such as Reclus (1909-1914; etc; Pelletier, 2009; etc.) or Kropotkin (1995; 1989; etc.) .

Now, if undoubtedly these processes are found in a state of absolute incipience in the area of academic knowledge at the international level, in Spain we barely find a handful of references which are still far from an even marginal normalization. Certainly, up until today, there have been re-issues and first-time translations of some basic titles on the topic, all by foreign authors (Graeber, 2011b; Clastres, 2010; Gledhill, 2010; Scott, 2003). And even if the anthropological analytical aspect is only approached occasionally opposite the preeminence of the historical and philosophical discourse, we can't ignore the academic scope of the journal Germinal (ISSN: 1886-3019), which has been publishing non-stop from 2006. However, the most outstanding initiatives are being produced in the surroundings of the University of Seville (Talego, 1996; Ventura, 2004; etc.), emphasizing the work of Beltrán Roca Martínez (2012; 2009; 2008a; etc.) regarding his systemic and agglutinating proposal which tends to offer an approach guideline or interpretative trend strictly speaking: the edition of the collective monograph Anarquismo y antropología: Relaciones e influencias mutuas entre la antropología social y el pensamiento libertario (2008) is a milestone which proves it. However, as is usually the case, this activity results in a specific libertarian editorial initiative, and, by rule, rarley trascends to the more institutionalized academic sphere, but by a very slow capilarity, which simultaneously results in the generation of poor concpetual tools and strong limitations in its discursive capacity to generate adequate and global explanations to social processes typical of a seriously critical situation in the political arena; that is to say, to understand, explain –and act on– actual reality.