Paul wrote:
As I understand it (this is not my field!), Murra was a pretty well known (and badly persecuted) leftist anthropologist; I know he is well thought of in the Andean countries among progressive anthropologists whom he put a lot of effort into supporting. Many feel his ideas got progressive anthro in the Andes out of a sterile dead end debate.
The Incan Empire The term Indian when applied to the inhabitants of the New World is in some ways a much too inclusive term, since it can mask some fundamental differences. North America was home to egalitarian societies based on hunting, fishing and horticulture. On the other hand, Inca civilization was much more like that of the Spanish invaders. It had a ruling class, a state, and an army. The capital city was in Cuzco, Peru. The borderlines of the empire included territory as far to the north as Ecuador, and Chile to the south. World systems theorists have adopted the term "tributary" to describe the mode of production in Inca civilization and others like it. It refers to the need to pay "tribute" to the ruling classes. The use of this word is a bid for a more general way of describing such societies instead of feudalism, which has European connotations. Jim Blaut argues in "Colonizer's Model of the World" that the terminology is unnecessary. "My view is that Eurocentric historians do not have a copyright on the term 'feudalism' and so it is not only valid but also in a sense just to use this term for the mode of production wherever we observe it, in any continent and any social formation." The terminology should interest us less than the underlying historical reality. That reality was that the Incan empire had more in common socially and economically with European or Asian advanced societies of the 1400s than it did with, for example, the Indians of the Great Plains. Anthropologist John Murra's article in the Peru Reader titled "Cloth, Textile, and the Inca Empire" sets down the exact nature of the tributary glue that held this civilization together. Subjects of the Incas had to spend a portion of their year weaving fine cloth out of cotton. The imperial army wore the clothing and when it conquered a new tribe, they presented the victims with a new wardrobe! This helped to cement them socially and soften the blow of defeat. Other tributary forms of labor included farming, soldiering, and mining, but it was spinning and weaving that occupied a central place. Clothing was functional, since the Andean climate was bitterly cold for much of the year. It also had esthetic and religious value. Puberty rites were the occasion for presenting a young boy or girl with new clothes. Feathers were an important part of clothing and one Spaniard reported on a warehouse that contained 100,000 dried birds just for this purpose. The sacredness attached to clothing persisted long after the fall of the Inca state. It was common to strip Europeans of their clothing after a skirmish took place. Most of all, clothing was a sign of status: "Any commodity so highly valued is bound to acquire rank and class connotations. The king had certain fabrics reserved for his use alone and his shirts are reported to have been very delicate, embroidered with gold and silver, ornamented with feathers, and sometimes made of such rare fibers as bat hair. Morfia claims to have handled a royal garment so delicately made that it fitted into the hollow of his hand. "The main insignia of royalty was a red wool fringe which fell over the king's forehead and was sewn onto his headdress. Kings were quite fastidious and changed their clothing frequently. Morfia and Garcilaso tell us that royalty gave away their discarded apparel, but Pedro Pizarro claims to have seen hampers which contained all of Atawalpa's used clothing, along with the bones and corn cobs he had gnawed on. This is credible as we know from Pedro Sancho, another and independent witness of the invasion, that the mummies of deceased kings kept "everything"--not only vessels used for eating, but all hair, nail parings, and clothes." The Inca state used coercion to draft spinners, weavers, shepherds, soldiers and farmers into its vast productive machine. It also made extensive use of census takers, tax collectors, messengers and clerks. These skilled workers kept track of what was being produced, who was producing it and how much was owed in terms of the payee and the payer. Most importantly, there was a professional army that kept everybody in line. full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/indian/incas.htm
