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primordial village is about what he calls "the rights of settlement". Or as he (p. 8) put it, “most lineages possess little beyond the rights of settlement". His examples illustrating these rights of settlement show that outsiders can come to terms with incumbents of an existing village by marriage, employment, litigation or force. So if settlement is negotiable in these ways, then multi-lineage villages should be, contra Freedman, a normal phenomenon as well. It is only when village membership has been gained according to these rights of settlement that the village can begin the process of lineage-building. Chapter 2 cites several such examples of lineage-village within a village. Proceeding to higher levels of village organization, Faure argues that the village as a local or territorial community has a religion of its own which is distinct from and equally important as ancestor worship in the expression of territorial identity. As he (pp. 70-71) put it explicitly, "the earth-god shrines and temples reflect a different aspect of the villager's religion, but like the ancestral hall, they are foci of local organization. . . . The act of founding the temple sets up a bond between the village and the deity". Village religion is important in his subsequent discussion of villages and village clusters to show that the definition of a village and village clusters do not necessarily follow the expectations of a descent model. Likewise in the case of village alliances, Faure argues that all such alliances found to exist within the traditional New Territories, even those archetypical regional defense alliances, were territorially rather than lineage based in nature (perhaps contrary to the kind of “system” described by Kuhn (1970)). More importantly, such alliances, according to Faure, have only existed since the mid-19th century and well after the peak of the Five Great Clans era (for discussion of the latter, see Baker 1966).
The latter half of the book essentially sets up his attempt in Chapter 10 to reconstruct the political history of The Five Great Clans during the 14th-19th centuries, in contrast to the development of lineage communities that one sets in the aftermath of the "great" era. In fact, much of his reconstruction is an attempt to demystify the stature of these great clans by showing how they and the gaudy ancestral halls they created to embellish their image represented primarily the unintentional creation of official policies. Or as he (p. 165) put it, “real lineage society did not depend on ornate ancestral halls”. All of this finally permits him in the final analysis to criticize historians for glorifying the ancestral
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primordial village is about what he calls "the rights of settlement". Or as he (p. 8) put it, “most lineages possess little beyond the rights of settlement". His examples illustrating these rights of settlement show that outsiders can come to terms with incumbents of an existing village by marriage, employment, litigation or force. So if settlement is negotiable in these ways, then multi-lineage villages should be, contra Freedman, a normal phenomenon as well. It is only when village. membership has been gained according to these rights of settlement that the village can begin the process of lineage-building. Chapter 2 cites several such examples of lineage-village within a village. Proceeding to higher levels of village organization, Faure argues that the village as a local or territorial community has a religion of its own which is distinct from and equally important as ancestor worship in the expression of territorial identity. As he (pp. 70-71) put it explicitly, "the earth-god shrines and temples reflect a different aspect of the villager's religion, but like the ancestral hall, they are foci of local organization. . . . The act of founding the temple sets up a bond between the village and the deity". Village religion is important in his subsequent discussion of villages and village clusters to show that the definition of a village and village clusters do not necessarily follow the expectations of a descent model. Likewise in the case of village alliances, Faure argues that all such alliances found to exist within the traditional New Territories, even those archetypical regional defense alliances, were territorially rather than lineage based in nature (perhaps contrary to the kind of “system” described by Kuhn (1970)). More importantly, such alliances, according to Faure, have only existed since the mid-19th century and well after the peak of the Five Great Clans era (for discussion of the latter, see Baker 1966).
The latter half of the book essentially sets up his attempt in Chapter 10 to reconstruct the political history of The Five Great Clans during the 14th-19th centuries, in contrast to the development of lineage communities that one sets in the aftermath of the "great" era. In fact, much of his reconstruction is an attempt to demystify the stature of these great clans by showing how they and the gaudy ancestral halls they created to embellish their image represented primarily the unintentional creation of official policies. Or as he (p. 165) put it, “real lineage society did not depend on ornate ancestral halls”. All of this finally permits him in the final analysis to criticize historians for glorifying the ancestral
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