Categories of sociocultural systems including band, tribe, chiefdom, and state are thought of as “ideal types” in anthropology. What does that mean?
They do not conform to the actual reality, complexity, and diversity of people and cultures in the world.
The study of these types has been perfected over generations of hypothesis testing.
These categories perfectly represent the empirical reality of cultural diversity.
These categories are meaningless abstractions that have no value whatsoever in cross-cultural comparison.
