I thought that was what you were trying to say, I was just confused by 'horizontal'.
>> Certainly I would regard a hundred plus members
>> as a big bloodline, not only because it means several generations
>> with several surviving boys but also because you are reaching the
>> limit of people who are actually known to one another.
>
>Not at all. _Everyone_ in a 1000-strong clan will be known to each other.
I can't believe that, they may know _of_ each other but actually knowing them as individuals is not on, even being able to recognise a thousand different people is doubtful.
>Wealthy people are more marriageable. If you're a cottar, it's
>unlikely that the fourth son of your fourth son, if you had one,
>would be marrying at all, so his powers of fertility don't really
>enter into the equation.
Assuming that a roughly equal number of each sex grow to adulthood and multiple partners are not socially acceptable then nearly all people will get married and have families. It's in the clan's interest for them to do so.
>In what way are you 'restricted'? I was just picking up on your
>own chosen example. I doubt there's much of cross-stead flow of root
>vegetables, though, for example, since they seem to be 'low status'
>food, and unlikely to be in systematic shortage anywhere. If they
>were, they certainly wouldn't have to be 'daily' (some of my oldest
>and dearest friends are carrots and onions -- but enough of my social
>life). Dairy surpluses would be gifted as cheese, I'd imagine; meat
>surpluses don't necessary have to be preserved, when they have a leg at
>each corner and can 'self-deploy'. I'm hard-pressed to think of
>anything much that _couldn't_ be exchanged on a fairly laid-back
>basis with the stead half a mile down the way, without needing to
>imagine a just-in-time delivery system of military precision.
A whole animal is a rather large gift and a lot of meat surpluses will be hunted animals rather than domestic ones. Basically the restriction is any produce normally consumed fresh.
>> Incidently do the
>> Orlanthi have clan flour mills or does each stead grind its own?
>
>Good questions. Would depend what 'technology' of mill they use.
>Water-mills or wind-mills would both seem a bit 'advanced', but
That's rather what I thought which implies each stead grinding their own on hand operated grindstones although I believe some parts of the arab world still use ox powered grindstones which have been traced back to Old Testament times. They're probably not efficent enough to justify centralising though.
>> >Well, it states the the case of feuding clans is 'typical', in the
>> >description of lawsuit procedure, and in contrast, 'normal justice
>> >occurs within a clan, and concerns only its members', which sounds
>> >different to me.
>>
>> What's the difference between 'typical' and 'normal' ?
>
>None. It's that which follows that's completely different. Different
>cases are being described.
The only clear difference is between a case involving people on the same stead and other cases. In the former a single juror's decision will be accepted by both parties while otherwise the case will be placed in front of a court with jurisdiction over both parties. It then goes on to say that a case between two clans is most typical and that a tribal moot or travelling royal court is usually resorted to. It follows that a dispute between clan members can be brought before the clan moot where a single juror does not have authority over both parties. It may be that this is untypical because most internal clan disputes are resolved by a lawspeaker advising what the clan preceedent is but the mechanism is there.
>> I'll try and stick to 'property right' to cover all the different
>> bits of things which aren't property in the modern sense, unless
>> you have a better term.
>
>Simply 'right' would be less misleading, surely.
Then there is confusion with the modern idea of 'rights' which are even more at variance with the idea we are talking about than 'property'.
>> I don't believe that in practice a chief has that much discretion,
>> even the feudal system didn't give that much power to the nobility
>> although some dishonest lords did grant and forfit tennants
>> property arbitarily. If wealth can be reallocated at the discretion
>> of the chief then you get a very centralised power structure
>> with the chief at the top, then his cronies and finally everyone
>> else.
>
>Practice is a very tricky thing, but there's surely no doubt about
>that power. Feudalism is not a useful comparison, as it lacks
>the 'vote the bums out' option.
Which is the very reason why the Orlanthi wouldn't accept arbitary use of that discretion. Gaining wealth would no longer be a matter of earning it but dependant on sucking up to the current chief. Such a practice would put an Orlanthi carl in a worse position than a medieval serf.
>I don't share the apparently widespread zeal for seeing odal property
>as a 'problem', that has to be defined out of any effective existence.
>Donald, to be fair, at least doesn't seem to object to communal
>property as such, which seems to be the more common syndrome ("Must
>Avoid... Anything Uncomfortable... to Modern Western Lifestyles...")
>but does seem keen to try and minimise the size of the 'communal' unit.
I don't see a problem with communal property and can easily imagine how it works in a group which is small enough for all the members to relate to each other as individuals. Once the group gets bigger I can't see how it works without some form of enforceable rules.
>Personally, I see 'ownership' as often a matter of degrees, or of
>different 'modes', rather than a matter of do or don't. One can
>recognise that something belongs to the clan, while still being
>jealous of your lodge's perogatives as 'stewards' of that property,
>or indeed being the ones who benefit from its fruits. Indeed, this
>in turn doesn't preclude you feeling (and asserting, if it ever
>becomes a matter of open dispute) a greater such sense of 'ownership'
>than your layabout brother, or other lesser cohabitees, without
>any sort of need for this to have ever really having been formalised
>in any fashion.
We're largely in agreement here, except for the idea that in a group as large as a clan can avoid formalising the rules whereby disputes between members are resolved. It may be custom rather than law and there are probably variations between clans but they will exist simply to reduce the clan chief's work.
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #35
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