Sodality (social anthropology)

In social anthropology, a sodality is a non-kin group organized for a specific purpose (economic, cultural, or other), and frequently spanning villages or towns [http://www.wifi-assen.nl/~mahuuon/CA/CA_glos_a.htm] . Sodalities are often based on common age or gender, with all-male sodalities more common than all-female. One aspect of a sodality is that of a group "representing a certain level of achievement in the society, much like the stages of an undergraduate's progress through college [university] " [http://nersp.cns.ufl.edu/~ufruss/ANT2000/testbank.htm] . In the anthropological literature, the Mafia in Sicily has been described as a sodality [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/431529] . Other examples include Masai war camps, and Crow and Cheyenne military associations, groups that were not much unlike today's Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion. ["Law and Order in Band and Village Societies"]

The term was coined by Elman Service, as part of his band-tribe-chiefdom-state model for the progression of political integration. It defined an organization that occurred across bands, and therefore was a part of a tribe, rather than a band, which was composed of only kin. ["Morton Fried's Social Evolution"]

From the Dictionary of Anthropology (Charles Winick 1970)sodality - "An association based on voluntary or involuntary membership. Soldities are often religious societies limited to a single objective, e.g. the veneration of a saint's relics." (p.493)

References

3. Winick, Charles, , Littlefield Adams Quality Paperback, 1970 http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Anthropology-Charles-Winick/dp/B000KZKRDA/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219605838&sr=1-7Social anthropology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anthropology