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I think this redirect is wrong. Society is not identical with nation. Stateless society could also refer to 'anarchy'. Tamira C. 23:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I concur that this redirect is wrong. I removed it earlier, but it has apparently been reverted for some reason. Please come discuss things before doing that again. Tiger Khan (talk) 18:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Ludwig von Mises article is entitled "The Rule of Law Without the State" and is discussing Somalia. It repeatedly shows how social norms (e.g. Xeer law) and financial incentives maintain a society without a central state, the definition of a stateless society. If you have a valid criticism of this idea, please state it here before simply making your same edit again. Tiger Khan (talk) 04:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Ludvig von Mises article entitled "The Rule of Law Without the State" is not what you keep reverting to. You keep reverting to this article entitled "In Somalia, Those Who Feed Off Anarchy Fuel It". The latter article only discusses southern Somalia/Mogadishu, mentions Somalia's current albeit ineffectual federal government, and never identifies Somalia as stateless; it just says that it was anarchic. That said, the admittedly very interesting Ludvig von Mises article is something you're mentioning here on this talk page for the first time. The article basically argues that since the outbreak of the civil war in 1991, Somalis have gone back to a traditional form of rule, and that this kritarchy (xeer) has worked much better for them than the impotent federal system of governance. Thus, if we're going to assert that Somalia was perhaps for a good number of years stateless, we must also at the very least mention that it did have a functioning informal system of government in place. And this traditional form of rule actually economically out-performed both Somalia's previous state administration as well as those of allegedly more prosperous neighboring countries with centralized governments. Middayexpress (talk) 11:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The version I kept reverting it to actually had both sources. In any case, the whole point of a stateless society is one in which the auspices of society are controlled by something other than government, usually a combination of capitalism and social norms (or communistic ideals and social norms, as was more seen in Spain). Thus, "informal government" is pretty much what stateless society is all about. The Xeer law has no overarching enforcement body, just the will of the people to follow it. As for economic outperformance, it's hard to quantify, but it seems quite possible, although it's irrelevant to this article. If you want to talk about that, I'd suggest leaving the "See also" link to anarchy in Somalia, which does discuss that. Tiger Khan (talk) 22:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the fact that Somalia was for a time without a functioning, centralized government yet still managed to sustain an economy that outperformed both its own previous economy under a state government as well as those of neighboring countries with state governments is relevant to this article. In fact, it's about as relevant to this article as that famous article from the Ludvig von Mises specialists on the Austrian School of economics (or this other article) since the latter is almost entirely about how Somalia managed to not only survive, but to actually thrive without a centralized administration. Unless the purpose of this article is to create the misimpression that every state (Somalia in particular) that functions without a traditional government is a failure, Wikipedia's NPOV and undue weight policies specify that all significant viewpoints should be aired and without bias. Middayexpress (talk) 22:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the concept of a stateless society. It is not about talking about whether stateless societies are better than societies with strong states, etc. Nowhere in this article does it reference Somalia as a failed state or say that an economy functions better or worse in a stateless society. Ergo, we do not need to talk about Somalian economic growth as there is no undue weight (or any weight at all) being put on the idea that Somalia is (or was) a failed state. Tiger Khan (talk) 23:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't communists want a stateless society as well? Shouldn't it be included in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.198.129 (talk) 12:06, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stateless marxism??? What a huge paradox! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.13.35.90 (talk) 00:38, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There doesn't seem to be an organized list of citations or references in this article. I was looking through it for a paper and I had wanted to verify the information here with the appropriate sources, especially for the Anarchist section. Only the Marxist Interpretation section cites its sources, and even so they aren't noted at the end of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.16.56.115 (talk) 22:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to improve the article as I found it, in a scientific sense, as I am writing a book which includes this topic. But I am not going to give everything away for free. You are going to have to put in some effort yourself and search wikipedia some more User:Jurriaan 3:18 28 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.136.223.40 (talk)

This article needs to be totally rewritten using reliable sources. I've started by removing an enormous quantity of unsourced original research. I'm very sorry if someone is attached to this content (it seems like they've put a lot of time into writing it), but both the content and writing style are unencyclopedic and don't discuss the issues focused on in scholarly works on anthropology and political science. Please don't re-add any of the deleted content, unless you can provide reliable sources to back the assertions.-- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't there be some mention of stateless mass-societies in modern times here? More specifically, I'm thinking of the Free Territory, Anarchist Catalonia and the Shinmin region in Manchuria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bricklayer (talk • contribs) 18:18, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Modern Somalia is also a good example. Robofish (talk) 19:38, 25 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, modern Somalia isn't a good example (though it perhaps was in the early 1990s to the mid-2000s). This is because, besides its autonomous northern regions (which have always had state governments), there is now also a Transitional Federal Government in place. Established in 2004, it has been making progressive advances against the Islamist insurgency in the southern part of the country, and now controls all of the capital Mogadishu. All the examples of stateless societies, like those cited above, seem to be historical. Middayexpress (talk) 19:58, 25 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

i am currently translating this article to french and more i advance in it, more i think it is kinda original research (OR). most of the article seems to be analysis or synthesis of the sources.

the 2 first paragraphs of the prehistoric section seems to be OR, then the citation is interresting, but is analized in the next paragraph without any references, but the counter-example of the tatar state. the next paragraph is also a counter exemple, analysing the source given at the end of it (i added a link to the text of the book, it is quite long but no page is given in the reference, so it is quite useless).

the two next paragraphs about possehl's research and Çatal Höyük and Jericho settelments are interresting, but the last paragraph speaks about statism, not stateless societies (or rather how they've been pushed out).

the last section about social and economic organization is interesting, but rather scarce.

the link to the category of "communism" (ie. marxism-leninism) has nothing to do in this article i think, "communism" has always been very, very far from the stateless communist socity that was planned in marx's theories.

maybe a part of the article could be made on american indians (before européean conquest and also the tribes not yet discovered), like the piaroa in venezuela or maybe the inuit in greenland and on indonesian/new guinea indigenous tribes living far away from civilization. regards, Ѕÿϰדα×₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

FYI the purpose of this article is being discussed at talk:Anarchy -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 02:44, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• @Electionworld: This article uses one of the maps that you created. Is the map based on any reliable 3rd-party sources, other than Wikipedia itself? Jarble (talk) 02:42, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • The map was uploaded by me to commons, but was created for wikipedia by @Briangotts:. You could ask him. Electionworld Talk? 08:41, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I will remove all of the "part of a series on" boxes apart from anarchism. This article does not discuss in any meaningful depth how a stateless society relates to any of these other political philosophies. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:16, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Some people are ideologically stateless. They are not supporting statelessness due to practical problems, but instead due to their ideology.

Ideological statelessness is related to internationalism but it's not necessarily synonymous, because many internationalists accept the notion of different states, and promote their collaboration and freedom of movement between them. An ideological stateless opposes statehood/states; even if the whole planet were a single state.

Please find texts on the subject and create the page.

• ideological statelessness: the rejection of any state/of statehood
  • a sub-case is when an individual accepts the necessity of states, but doesn't want to ascribe to any for ideological reasons
  • the rejection of self-assignment might be solely ideological; most "ideologically stateless" people use for practical reasons their national documents, but they don't belong ideologically to any nation; very few try to cancel their documents or legally alter them, but that's legally impossible in many countries [states have archives]. Self-inflicted official deletion of documents limits the actions of the individual, thus most ideologically stateless do not try to cancel their citizenship in order they are able to move freely, open bank accounts and act freely in general.
• internationalism: doesn't specify if it promotes the abolition of all states or simply free movement and other structural connections among them
• antistatehood: the view that all states must be abolished (an ideological stateless might accept the necessity of states [or not; it's not defined]; thus antistatehood isn't tautological to ideological statelessness)

Many anarchists have texts on the subject. Search also texts from Europe (even small countries) and South America (they have many texts on the topic; they usually do not use the academic terms of the categories, but they elaborate very analytically on ALL the spectrum of these worldviews/personal identities/ideas).

This would seem to be more in scope for the article Statelessness than here. --LukeSurl ^t c 05:11, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do the Roma count as a stateless society? --142.163.194.244 (talk) 11:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, Romani people are residents of states. BeŻet (talk) 16:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@BeŻet: I did actually mean the whole paragraph! It's very "anth 101", to the point that it's actually a bit hard to find a meaningful citation for it. What part of the paragraph in particular do you think needs a citation? I might find it easier to satisfy a more specific question, or we could write the offending part out. -- asilvering (talk) 18:51, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The paragraph is definitely not a case of WP:BLUESKY. All of it needs a citation. BeŻet (talk) 22:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"For most of prehistory people lived in stateless societies". This claim does not seem to be supported by any evidence. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:41, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]