Abstract

The founding social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski believed that any stable society had to meet a set of needs, but different societies had different ways of doing so. Social anthropologists report these different ways. But what about unstable societies? Are there societies which bubble up and disappear? Malinowski would presumably say that these societies are not of interest to social anthropology or are of too low priority. His focus is, I believe, a discreet criticism of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which sought to explain the origins of a peculiar rite of succession: to become the priest to the goddess Diana at Nemi, one had to be a runaway, enter the sacred grove, and break off a branch from a bough, which entitled one to a fight to the death with the current incumbent. Anyway, the Sabrina Carpenter incompetence paradox allows us to glimpse at an unstable society. If you prefer incompetent men (by normal standards), competent men leave and a collapse occurs.