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A Big Man refers to a highly influential individual in a tribe, especially in Melanesia and Polynesia. Such person may not have formal tribal or other authority (through for instance material possessions, or inheritance of rights), but can maintain recognition through skilled persuasion and wisdom. The big man has a large group of followers, both from his clan and from other clans. He provides his followers with protection and economic assistance, in return receiving support which he uses to increase his status. ==Big Man "system"== The American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has studied the Big Man phenomenon. In his much-quoted〔 James Whitley ("Social Diversity in Dark Age Greece", ''The Annual of the British School at Athens'' 86 (1991:341-365) applied Sahlins' ethnographic model to instability in settlement patterns during the Greek Dark Age, 10th-8th centuries BCE. 〕 1963 article "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia", Sahlins uses analytically constructed ideal-types of hierarchy and equality to compare a larger-scale Polynesian-type hierarchical society of chiefs and sub-chiefs with a Melanesian-type big-man system.〔 (Marshall Sahlins, ''Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief; Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia'', In: Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 5, No.3, pp.285-303, April 1963. ) 〕 The latter consists of segmented lineage groups, locally held together by faction-leaders who compete for power in the social structure of horizontally arranged and principally equal groupings (factions). Here, leadership is not ascribed, but rather gained through action and competition "with other ambitious men". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Big man (anthropology)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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