There is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a state,[1] or to what extent a stateless group must be independent of the de jure or de facto control of states so as to be considered a society by itself.
The following groups have been cited as examples of stateless societies by some commentators. But the classification of these societies as truly "stateless" is controversial.
Human society predates the existence of states, meaning that the history of almost any ethnic group would include pre-state organisation. The groups listed below have been identified as examples of stateless societies by various commentators, including discussions relating to anarchism.
^Gelderloos, Peter (2010). "What about global environmental problems, like climate change?". Anarchy Works. San Francisco: Ardent Press.
^Cohn, Norman (1970). The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary millenarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages. London: Paladin. pp. 207–208.
^Milani, Giuseppe; Selvi, Giovanna (1996). Tra Rio e Riascolo: piccola storia del territorio libero di Cospaia. Lama di San Giustino: Associazione genitori oggi. p. 18. OCLC848645655.
^ abcdefghijklmBarclay, Harold (1990). People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy. Seattle: Left Bank Books.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzMbah, Sam; Igariwey, I.E. (1997). African Anarchism: The History of a Movement. Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press. pp. 34–35. Among the stateless societies that existed on the continent were the Igbo, the Birom, Angas, Idoma, Ekoi, Nbembe, the Niger Delta peoples, the Tiv (Nigeria), the Shona (Zimbabwe), Lodogea, the Lowihi, the Bobo, the Dogon, the Konkomba, the Birifor (Burkina Faso, Niger), the Bate, the Kissi, the Dan, the Logoli, the Gagu and Kru peoples, the Mano, Bassa Grebo and Kwanko (Ivory Coast, Guinea, Togo), the Tallensi, Mamprusi, Kusaasi (Ghana), the Nuer (Southern Sudan), etc. — numbering today nearly two hundred million individuals in all.
^"Indian Towns and Buildings of Eastern North Carolina", Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, National Park Service, 2008, Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^Eggan, Fred, Social Organization of the Western Pueblos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)
^Emmanuel C. Onyeozili and Obi N. I. Ebbe, “Social Control in Precolonial Igboland of Nigeria”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies (2012)
^Zibechi, Raúl (2010). Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements. Oakland: AK Press.
^Turnbull, Colin (1968). The Forest People. New York: Simon & Schuster.
^Ladner, Kiera (2003). "Governing Within an Ecological Context: Creating an Alternative Understanding of Blackfoot Governance". Studies in Political Economy. 70: 137–150. doi:10.1080/07078552.2003.11827132. S2CID151545741.
^Robert Fernea, “Putting a Stone in the Middle: the Nubians of Northern Africa,” in Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 111.
^William A. Starna, “Pequots in the Early Seventeenth Century” in ed. Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Norman and London: University of Oakland Press, 1990), 42.
^Graeber, David (2004). Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigms Press. pp. 26–27.
^John Menta, The Quinnipiac: Cultural Conflict in Southern New England (New Haven: Yale University, 2003)
^Lee, Richard (2003). The Dobe Ju/hoansi. Thomas Learning/Wadsworth.
^Robert K. Dentan, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979
^Greg Urban, “The Social Organizations of the Southeast,” in ed. Raymond J. Demallie and Alfonso Ortiz, North American Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 175-178.
^Scott, James (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: University of Yale Press.