We run tingz, tingz nah run we

The lens to which Borake refers is an interesting and useful tool, but it often bears more of a resemblance to the warped glass of a fun-house mirror than to the precision optics of a scientific instrument. Borake has shown that thing meetings featured several of the crucial strategies found in both Clastres’s and Barclay’s models of limited leadership: the participation of all male members of the community, the selection of temporary leaders for specific purposes, and leaders being subservient to, rather than dominant over, the community (Clastres 1989, 29–47; Barclay 1990, 121–50). If these Scandinavian societies really were organized as anarchist federations, we should be able to identify periods of peace interspersed with small-scale conflicts between neighbouring groups and larger conflicts with more distant groups (Clastres 2010, 272–77). Borake repeatedly mentions Robin Hood’s campaign of resistance (to the authority of both the local sheriff and the king of England), but fails to mention that in the popular version of the story the Merry Men are keen supporters of King Richard. 3 The anthropological record provides plentiful examples of traditional societies operating anarchically, but history provides only a limited number of examples of hierarchic societies attempting to establish or revert to anarchism.