Pierre Clastres: a new perspective about the "primitive" societies

In the present post, I will talk about the anarchist anthropologist Pierre Clastres. In my perspective he was totally different respect to his colleagues, (including the most ancient anthropologists), because he was not only an "armchair" social scientist, but he travelled to many places (like America and Asia) to do his theories and he was a relevant activist in French May during 1968. His social commitment made he a different kind of anthropologist.

Clastres as academic was very special: he really changed the current paradigm that framed the anthropology in his times (60´s - 70´s). Their predecessors thought that "primitive" societies (societies whitout State) did not have State because they could not conceive the State idea, what this is explained, according to them, by their child consciousness.

Pierre Clastres, on the contrary, thought and told that "primitive" (he used this concept in ironic way) societies did have not State because they didn't want to made a State, what is explained by their desire to keep their social class indivision. So, Clastres doesn´t thought that the "primitive" societies were primitive a cause of their lack of State, his thouth that this societies were against State, against the authorithy.