Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology

Society Against the State (French: La Société contre l'État) is a 1974 ethnography of power relations in South American rainforest native cultures written by anthropologist Pierre Clastres and best known for its thesis that tribal societies reject the centralization of coercive power. Clastres challenged the idea that all cultures evolve through Westernization to adopt coercive leadership as a popular, ethnocentric myth.