Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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acted. The polis culture was individualistically-corporativistic, with a
positive evaluation of reasonable innovations 74 while the Benin one was
collectivistic and strongly tradition-oriented, archaic in terms of Karl Jaspers’s
(1953/1949) typology of culture. Indeed, there was no political despotism in
Benin; there was despotism of another sort – that of traditions. If we depart
from the Weberian formulation of power as the ability to circumscribe people’s
behavioral alternatives (Weber 1978), we will have to confess that just the
traditions were true power in the full sense of the word in the Bini culture. It is
also evident how differently the political life in the societies of two types was
organized. In the final analysis the nature of the differences between them is in
the fact that the polis was a civil society while Benin was very far from its
ideals, they were absolutely strange for her.
3. Benin as a homoarchic local-institution-matrix supercomplex society
Returning to Benin, we must underline once again that the homoarchic
extended-family-based community is still alive even today being the most
adequate social framework for agricultural production in the Western African
tropical forest zone (see chapter 4, section 4). However, what is even much
more significant with regards to the present work’s problematics, is that the
way of the Benin Kingdom’s formation was through “likening” of the
supracommunity socio-political institutions to the homoarchic community of
extended families. The judicial system (see Dapper 1671: 492; Talbot 1926:
III, table 19; Egharevba 1949: 11; 1960: 35; Bradbury 1957: 32–33, 41–42;
Sidahome 1964: 127), the system of imposing and collecting tribute (e.g.,
Nyendael 1705: 452–453; Anonymous 1746: 103; Bradbury 1957: 42–43;
Agbontaen 1995: 122–123), etc. – all corresponded to the homoarchic character
of the society. Any interaction with suprafamily authorities a common Bini had
to realize through the head of his kin unit. However, the head of a family could
apply directly to his community leader only. This leader, in his turn, could
apply exclusively to the respective chiefdom’s head (if the given community
was not autonomous), and only the latter (alongside with the autonomous
community leader) had the right to solicit the titled chiefs who could make the
case known to the supreme ruler. The very price of human life in Benin
depended on one’s social position: especially in the slave-trade era but also
before it sacrificing of a number of people, depending on the deceased’ status
was an obligatory element of the most highly ranked chiefs and the Oba’s
burial and mourning ceremonies (Kalous 1969: 375376; Ryder 1969: 71;
Ebohon 1972: 55; Resende 1973/1798: 348; Dapper 1975/1668: 164; Roese
1992a).
Millar resumes in her juvenile but knowledgeable and qualified book (1997:
48–49):
With the Oba at the top [of social pyramid], everyone in
Benin had a rank. To do certain things, you had to have