Social Stratification and Other Forms of Social Differentiation
social stratification
•the unequal distribution of goods and services, rights and obligations, power and
prestige
•all attributes of positions in society, not attributes of individuals
•universality of stratification
STRATIFICATION & STATUS
•status - ascribed & achieved
•ascribed status - social positions that people hold by virtue of birth
•achieved status - social positions attained as a result of individual action
•shift from kin based societies to modern society involves growth in importance of
achieved status
Roles, Stereotypes, Stratification
•Roles -- tasks & activities that a culture assigns to people
•Stereotypes -- oversimplified strongly held ideas about the characteristics of people
•Stratification -- unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power,
prestige, personal freedom) between people reflecting their position in the social
hierarchy
Stratified Society
•stratification means
–there are significant breaks in the distribution of goods services, rights, obligations,
power prestige
–as a result of which are formed collectivities or groups we call strata
3 TYPES OF SOCIETIES
•egalitarian societies
•rank societies
•Class/caste societies
Egalitarian Societies
•no social groups having greater access to economic resources, power, or prestige
•usually foragers
•Morton Fried - "there are as many positions of prestige in any age-sex grade as there are
people capable of filling them“
•differences in prestige not related to economic differences - reciprocity; hunter & ability
& sharing of catch
•the culture works to separate the status achieved from actual possession of wealth
Rank Societies
•do not have unequal access to economic resources or to power, but they do contain
social groups having unequal access to prestige
•generally practice agriculture & herding
•unequal access to prestige often reflected in position of chief to which only some
members of a specified group in the society can succeed
•position of chief partly hereditary, treated with deference
Kwakiutl & the potlatch - the drive for prestige
•Kwakiutl chiefs never content with status & prestige, always insecure
•claims to hereditary position fragile
•make claims to family titles (totem poles) but others can claim descent lines too
•justify position as chief - the potlatch
•return potlatches, rival feasts
•ceaseless flow of prestige & valuables moving in opposite directions
The Potlatch and Chiefly Rank
•potlatch not the result of maniacal whims of megalomaniac chiefs in the quest for
prestige
•status rivalry through competitive feasts of the potlatch
•assures the production & redistribution of wealth among peoples who have not fully
acquired a ruling class
Versus Egalitarian Societies
•in egalitarian societies competitive displays & conspicuous consumption by individuals
disappears
•anyone foolish enough to boast how great he/she is gets accused of witchcraft
•reciprocity predominates, not redistribution
–remember “Eating XMAS in the Kalahari”
class societies
•Unequal access to all 3 advantages, economic resources, power, prestige
•Open & closed class systems
–the extent to which mobility occurs allowing people to pass through inequalities
•Closed system
–No mobility
–tend to persist across generations
•Open system
–ease of social mobility permitted
caste, slavery, and class systems
•caste systems
–closed, hereditary systems of stratification often dictated by religion
–hierarchical social status is ascribed at birth, people locked into their parents social
position
– legal & religious sanctions, occupation, commensality applied against people who seek
to cross them
•apartheid - caste like system, legally maintained hierarchy based on skin color (the color
bar)
caste, slavery, and class systems
•slavery – closed class system
–people treated as property
–the most extreme & coercive form of legalized inequality
Open Class System
•facilitates mobility
•individual achievement & personal merit determining social rank
•hierarchical social status is achieved on the basis of people's efforts
•ascribed status (family background, ethnicity, gender, religion, skin color) less
important
•blurred class lines & wide range of status positions
Gender and Social Stratification
Gender and Anthropology
•interest in hierarchical relations between men and women has been a feature of
anthropology since its earliest days
•19th century evolutionists and their explanations for the rise of culture
•promiscuous horde gives way to socially organized marriage and kinship, for example
Gender and Anthropology
•anthropology of gender has been key in establishing that sexual inequality is not a
biological fact but instead and cultural and historical one
development of the study of sex, sexuality and gender in anthropology
•Anthropology of Women early 1970's attention to the lack of women in standard
ethnographies
•Anthropology of Gender challenged the basis for understanding social roles of male
and female
•Feminist Anthropology challenged the biological basis of sex and sexuality
–and the foundations of anthropology as it had been done
SEX, SEXUALITY, GENDER
•not the same thing
•all societies distinguish between males and females
•a very few societies recognize a third, sexually intermediate category
SEX (sexual dimorphism)
•marked differences in male & female biology
•contrasts in:
– primary sex characteristics
•genitalia & reproductive organs
– secondary sex characteristics
•breasts, voice, hair, also average weight, height, & strength
SEXUALITY (reproduction)
•all societies regulate sexuality
–lots of variation cross-culturally
•degree of restrictiveness not always consistent through life span
–adolescence vs. adulthood
•Normative sexual orientation
–Heterosexual, homosexual, transexual
•Sexuality in societies change over time
GENDER
•GENDER - the cultural construction of male & female characteristics
–vs. the biological nature of men & women
•SEX differences are biological - GENDER differences are cultural
•behavioral & attitudinal differences between the sexes emerge from culture rather than
biology
GENDER ROLES, STEREOTYPES, STRATIFICATION
•gender roles - tasks & activities that a culture assigns to sexes
•gender stereotypes - oversimplified strongly held ideas about the characteristics of men
& women
•gender stratification - unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power,
prestige, personal freedom) between men & women reflecting their position in the social
hierarchy
universals versus particulars
•universal subordination of women is often cited as one of the true cross-cultural
universals, a pan-cultural fact
–Engels called it the “world historical defeat of women”
•even so the particulars of women’s roles, statuses, power, and value differ tremendously
by culture
EXPLAINING WOMEN’S STATUS CROSS-CULTURALLY
•Biological hypotheses about the cross-cultural differences in men and women
•effects of having children on division of labor
•fertility maintenance hypothesis
•differences in strength
•expendability theory of males as soldiers
•sociobiological premises for complex gendered behavior
Friedl and Leacock argument
•variation among foragers
•male dominance is based on exchange, public exchange
•versus that exchanged privately by women
•Exchange of scarce resources in egalitarian societies, gender stratification, and universal
subordination of women
DOMESTIC - PUBLIC DICHOTOMY (M. Rosaldo)
•opposition between domestic (reproduction) & public (production) provides the basis of
a framework necessary to identify and explore the place of male & female in psycho,
cultural, social and economic aspects of life
•degree to which the contrast between public domestic (private) sphere is drawn
promotes gender stratification-rewards, prestige, power
domestic sphere
•clearly drawn in societies where division of labor encompasses more than age & sex
differentiation (complex societies)
•inequality in material rewards for labor
•less clearly drawn in societies where division of labor beyond age & sex is minimal
(egalitarian)
•rewards are highly valued social roles with prestige rather than material goods
Domestic : Public Spheres
•mobility & gender
•Domestic : public dichotomy not only distinguishes activities, but culturally encodes
space
M. Rosaldo and the Ilongot of the Philippines
•positive cultural value placed adventure, travel, knowledge of & experience with the
outside world
•Ilongot men as headhunters visited distant places, amassed experiences & returned to
express their knowledge-receive acclaim
•Ilongot women - these activities not available to them
Mobility, Public : Domestic (Private), and Gender Straitification
•mobility not just through geographic space but social space (associations
•veiling & Islamic women
•factory women in Malaysia
•US - WW2 & factory women for war effort
–1960s, 70s, 80s - changing gender composition of economy
persistence of dualisms in ideologies of gender
•a particular view of men and women as opposite kinds of creatures both biologically and
culturally
•nature/culture
•domestic/public
•reproduction/production
Reproduction and Social Roles
•roles - those minimal institutions and modes of activity that are organized immediately
around one or more mothers and their children
•women everywhere lactate & give birth to children
•likely to be associated with child rearing & responsibilities of the home
Production and Social Roles
•roles - activities, institutions, and forms of association that link, rank, organize, or
subsume particular mother-child groups
a long running controversy in anthropology
•Sherry Ortner’s famous article “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture”
•argument is that across cultures, women are more often associated with nature and the
natural and are therefore denigrated
•Ortner - in reality women are no further nor closer to nature than men - cultural
valuations make women appear closer to nature than men
The “Third Gender”
•essentialism of western ideas of sexual dimorphism - dichotomized into natural & then
moral entities of male & female that are given to all persons, one or the other
•committed western view of sex and gender as dichotomous, ascribed, unchanging
•other categories - every society including our own is at some time or other faced with
people who do not fit into its sex & gender categories
The “Third Gender”
•a significant number of people are born with genitalia that is neither clearly male or
female
–Hermaphrodites
•persons who change their biological sex
•persons who exhibit behavior deemed appropriate for the opposite sex
•persons who take on other gender roles other than those indicated by their genitals
Third Gender: Western Bias
•multiple cultural & historical worlds in which people of divergent gender & sexual
desire exist
–margins or borders of society
•may pass as normal to remain hidden in the official ideology & everyday commerce of
social life
•when discovered - iconic matter out of place - "monsters of the cultural imagination“
•third gender as sexual deviance a common theme in US
–evolution & religious doctrine
–heterosexuality the highest form, the most moral way of life, its natural
Third Gender Cross-Culturally
•various cultures deals with these persons differently
•some cultures conceive of more than two genders
•both sex and gender can change within an individual's lifetime
•provokes us to reexamine our own assumptions regarding our gender system
•emphasizes gender role alternatives as adaptations to economic and political conditions
rather than as "deviant" and idiosyncratic behavior
•rigid dichotomozation of genders is a means of perpetuating the domination of females
by males and patriarchal institutions.
Berdache or Two Spirits among plains Indians
•men who take on many female gender roles & stereotypes, stratification, become
another wife
–warrior role, stereotype for men
•man compelled by supernatural spirits
•sexual & social functions (as another wife)
•condition is not stigmatized, role not reduced to sex act, not illegal or immoral, only
atypical
•role is legitimized by spiritual power
•influential in own communities as curer, artist, matchmaker, companion to warriors
Xanith in Oman
•an effeminate man, a feminine but not castrated male
•Like Two Spirits
•not static, not permanent during a person's lifetime or during the history of society
•in Oman; if the man (women) has sex particularly with a virgin becomes male again
THEORIES OF GENDER INEQUALITY
Engels
•theory of the origin of female subordination
•tied to the male control of wealth
•built on 19th cent. assumption of communal societies as matrilineal
•men overthrew matrilineality & formed patriarchal family leading to monogamous
family
•differential ownership of wealth led to inequality within the family & thus between the
sexes
•gender differences arose from technological developments that led to changes in
relations of production
Leacock - (expands on Engels)
•subjugation of women due to breakdown of communal ownership of property &
isolation of individual family as econ. Unit
•transformation of relations of production with female labor continuing to be for
domestic unit or private sphere
•male production directed towards distribution outside the domestic group (public
sphere)
•occurs with development of private property & class society
Sacks
•political power that results from the ability to give & receive goods in exchange
(redistribution)
•allows for sexual stratification in non-class societies
Sanday Reeves
•female status dependent on degree to which men & women participate in activities of
reproduction, warfare, subsistence
Friedl and Leacock
•not rights & control over production but rights of distribution & control over channels of
distribution critical for gender stratification
RETHINKING SUBORDINATION
•Ardener - muted models that underlie male discourse
•diversity of one life or many lives
•gender roles, stereotypes, stratification
–changes over time
–changes with position in lifecycle
–status of men & women i.e. in male dominant societies
•decision making roles belong to men but as women reach menopause; change with
marriage status, virgins, wives, widows (and men)
RETHINKING SUBORDINATION
•women, like men, are social actors who work in structured ways to achieve desired ends
•formal authority structure of a society may declare that women are impotent & irrelevant
•but attention to women's strategies & motives, sorts of choices, relationships established,
ends achieved indicates women have good deal of power
•strategies appear deviant & disruptive
–actual components of how social life proceeds
AGE AS A FORM OF SOCIAL DIVISION
•AGE-SETS, AGE GRADES, AGE MATES
•differentiation of social role based on age, commonly found in small-scale societies of
North America and East Africa
•Age sets are a type of sodality: nonresidential groups that cut across kinship ties and thus
promote broader social solidarity
•Age grades may be marked by changes in biological state, such as puberty
•Or by socially recognized status changes such as marriage and the birth of a child
•Persons of junior grade may defer to those of more senior grade who in turn teach, test,
or lead their juniors.
AGE & CULTURE in N. AMERICA: AGE-SETS AND THE LIFE-CYCLE
•Age Sets
–‘Childhood’
–‘Youth’
–‘Middle-aged’
–‘Elderly’
•Age & Social Power
–Elderly & children – dependent
–Youth & Middle-Age – independent
–Middle-Age – economic, political, social power
E. Africa Maasai political and social structure
Maasai Age Sets
•rigid system of age-sets
•apply primarily to men; women automatically become members of the age-set of their
husbands
•groups of the same age (give or take five years or so) are initiated into adult life during
the same period
•The age-set is a permanent grouping
–lasts throughout the life of its members
•a hierarchy of grades
–junior warriors, senior warriors
–junior elders (sometimes classed as senior warriors), and senior elders
•the ones who make decisions affecting the whole tribe