Talk:List of stateless societies

How to fix this list

The task of this list sounds straightforward: list the stateless societies. However this is actually a very hard task and the article currently fails to be useful as it exists, mostly because it does not define what it is listing. The problem arises from its origin, this was a split from list of anarchist communities, and this is evident from the sources used. However statelessness and anarchy are not identical.

First issue: when is a society a distinct society worthy of mention in this list? I assume we want to list societies that were independent, rather than existing within the territory of a state. We then run into questions of de jure and de facto control of territory, especially for movements that carved out a degree of independence from states by force. Additionally the question of whether something constitutes a state is not always unambigious.

Second issue: humans lived in stateless societies for almost the entire existence of us as a species, with states coming into existence in the last three millennia. Unfortunately, while states are fairly well defined things that have articles about them, pre-state societies are more amorphous and aren't clearly listable items. Listing various, mostly non-white, ethnic groups as "indigenous" stateless societies is problematic. People of literally every ethnic group existed in stateless societies before states dominated the world. Nowadays, people of literally every ethnic group live in states. But the current indigenous societies list arbitrarily describes some ethnicities as "stateless" because some book on anarchism mentioned them as examples. Additionally, when a stateless society became a state society, though either internal changes, cultural assimilation or foreign conquest, is going to be an extremely difficult question in most cases.

I don't see an obvious solution to this. Perhaps we could systematically try to find articles, such as Prehistoric Britain, that discuss the pre-state societies that existed around the globe and list these. But this would be extremely difficult, and a small paragraph for each would be needed delimiting where and when statelessness occurred.

What needs to be done as a priority is to form some consensus on what this page is trying to list, and then describe that criteria within the article.

Tagging the list's creator and those people who contributed to the AfD discussion: Grnrchst, Andrew_Davidson, History_DMZ, W1tchkr4ft_00, My_very_best_wishes, KJS_ml343x.

--LukeSurl ^{t c} 10:57, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The current content seems fine. In particular:

1. the nature of the entries is clear -- societies without a central authority -- and there's a link to a corresponding article for those who want to know more
2. the entries are sourced and structured

So, if it works, don't fix it.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:05, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Andrew_Davidson, I do not thing the nature of entries is clear, particularly as to what a "society" is for the purposes of this list. I'll be specific point by point:

• Our article on the Essenes describes them as a sect rather than as a society independent of the Roman state, and is unclear as to where they lived at all. The reader cannot tell what entity apparently existed for "216 years, 0 days".
• The Frisian freedom had an absence of feudalism, but was also within the territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Is this sufficiently independent to list? It's impossible to decide this based on the criteria of the list because we haven't defined what they are.
• The Republic of Cospaia article describes this entity as a small state.
• Golden Age of Piracy - pirates were various independent groups rather than a society. Pirates largely operated out of territory claimed/administered by states. The source quoted discusses their internal organisation. All organised crime has some degree of internal organisation, however this seems unlikely to constitute a "society" of the sort we're trying to list here. Or maybe it does, but there's no defined criteria for what a "society" means for this list.
• South Carolina Commune - there is no mention of this entity in the linked History of South Carolina#Reconstruction_1865–1877 section. Between 1868 and 1874 South Carolina was part of the United States of America, an established state. Is this list going to include communities within states that operated on anarchist principles? Because if so, that would dramatically expand the scope of the page (effectively incorporating list of anarchist communities).
• Aboriginal Australians lived in stateless societies. However now Aboriginal Australians live in states. The listed entity however is the article about the ethnic group, rather than the stateless society. The reader is given no information about the stateless society that is apparently being listed.

• The above point could be made for every single ethnic group listed. People of every single other ethnic group also existed in stateless societies at some point in (pre)history.

So I kind of have a problem with nearly every entry in this list. I'm aware that stateless society is a definable concept - I'm a contributor to that article. I'm trying to communicate that listing "stateless societies" creates a lot of complexities - particularly regarding the delineation of "society", and simply repeating the one-line definition does not solve the issues in this case. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:50, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

The AfD demonstrated that there is no consensus for LukeSurl's negative views about this. The issue seems to be that they are expecting perfection in an imperfect world. For an analogy, consider rivers. These are, by nature, literally fluid. They rise and fall with the seasons, meander and fork. There is no exact definition which distinguishes them from streams, torrents, creeks and whatever. And their length is somewhat arbitrary because of their tree-like, fractal structure. But yet we still have a List of rivers by length because this is traditionally expected in an encyclopedia. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson. That is a useful analogy. List of rivers by length has a whole definition of length section discussing the ambiguities of what that article lists, and helps the reader identify what is meant by the "length" of a river. A similar section would be useful here. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 12:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I've made an edit that addresses the ambiguous nature of this listing. Critically, stating that this is a list of societies that have been described as examples of stateless societies communicates this ambiguity to the reader (WP:Verifiability, not truth). I'm still very unsure about the arbitrary list of ethnic groups however. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 13:13, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. Just throwing a couple of ideas. One possibility is to use the broadest legitimate definition of stateless society that can be found. Another idea is using the opposite criteria/definition of sovereign state (see: List of sovereign states#Criteria for inclusion). This list could also serve as a "list of lists" which includes List of anarchist communities, List of stateless nations, etc. Cordially, History DMZ ^{(HQ) † (wire)} 18:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)