Grouping by Gender, Age,
Common Interest and Class
Chapter 11
What Principles do People Use to
Organize Societies?
• Besides kinship and marriage, people group
themselves by age, common interest,
gender, and class or social rank within a
society to deal with problems not
conveniently handled by marriage, the
family and/or household, descent group, or
kindred.
Grouping by Age
 Age Grade: Categories based on age (usually of the same sex)
 widely used means of organizing people in societies, including
those of Europe and North America.
▪ (i.e. infant, boy, girl, young man, young woman, man, woman, senior, elder) –
also- (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior in college.)
 A specific time is often ritually established for moving from a
younger to an older age grade.
 Age Sets—people born around the same time who move through
age-grade categories together.
 (i.e. Generations are Age Sets. The “baby boomer” generation (Age Set) moved
through the age grades of: infants, toddlers, young men/women, men/women,
seniors, together.)
 (i.e. everyone born in the year “1990” would be an Age Set too, going through
similar age grades as above).
Age Grouping: Tiriki
Ethnographic Example from Nyanza Province, Kenya
 Seven named age sets pass
through four successive age
grades.
◦ http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=Us6TqBX_qEk
◦ Google Map link:
◦
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocod
e=&q=Nyanza+Province,+Kenya&sll=-8.010276,53.102417&sspn=1.528474,2.90863&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Nyan
za+Province,+Kenya&ll=0.527336,34.453125&spn=12.324284,23.269043&t=p&z=6
 Each age set embraces a 15year span and opens to accept
new initiates every 105 years.
 In principle, the system
resembles our college classes.
Age Grades
Ethnographic Ex from Kenya
(Serengeti area)
 Maasai subclans of western Kenya at the opening parade of the
elaborate eunoto ceremony, marking the coming of age of morans
(warriors). At the end of the ceremony, these men will be in the next age
grade— junior adults—ready to marry and start families.
 Also have a 3-day initiation ceremony into an elderhood age grade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mByW8hsCXE
(10 min)
Grouping by Gender
 Separates men and women to varying degrees
in different societies.
 Ex: Division of Labor and spheres (from Ch. 8):
▪ Flexible/Integrated
▪ Dual Sex
▪ Segregated
 In some societies, they may be together much
of the time.
 In other societies they may spend much time
apart, even to the extreme of eating and
sleeping separately.
Gender-based Groups
Ethnographic Example
• Gender issues are symbolically
worked out in mythologies and
ceremonial dances among the
Yawalapiti who live on the
Tuatuari River in Brazil’s upper
Xingu region
• Ownership of the sacred
trumpets, are guarded by the
tribesmen and traditionally
women were forbidden to see
them.
Grouping by Common Interest
 Common-interest associations are formed to deal with specific
challenges or opportunities.
 Membership may be voluntary or compulsory.
 Common-interest associations have been a feature of human
societies since the appearance of the first farming villages (i.e. guilds,
philosophical schools) several thousand years ago, but they are now
linked with rapid social change and urbanization, with many common
interest groups now online.
◦ They increasingly assume roles formerly played by kinship groups we saw
in the previous chapter (i.e. providing the social structure for a culture/subculture).
 What common interest groups do we have in our culture?
Grouping by Class and Social Rank
Stratification
 Stratification is the division of society into two or more
social classes of people who do not share equally in basic
resources, power, or prestige.
 Such a hierarchical social structure is characteristic of all
of the world’s societies having large and similar
populations with a central political control.
◦ Stratified society: divided into categories of people who do not
share equally in resources, influence, or prestige.
◦ Egalitarian society: has as many valued positions as persons
capable of filling them.
Grouping by Class and Social Rank
Caste Systems
• Caste: A social class in
which membership is
determined by birth and
fixed for life.
• Children automatically
belong to their parents’
caste.
• Example, India
Dalits, known as “untouchables” in India’s
traditional caste system, light 100 “candles
of freedom” at the 2004 World Social Forum
held in Mumbai.
Are we a stratified society?
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Homeless men sleeping on sidewalks—one in India, one in the United States.
Outcast groups such as India’s untouchables are a common feature of stratified societies.
In the United States, 13% of the population is in poverty according to the 2004 U.S. Census. In the
United States 70% of wealth is in the hands of 10% of the population.
Our stratification may not be as explicit as India’s caste system, but do we have levels and….what
are they?
 We have egalitarian ideals –i.e. The American Dream, but reality is sometimes different….why?
Do we have a type of Untouchables who would be barred from holding certain societal
positions?
 Our actions and reactions towards others may hold the answer…
Ways of Expressing Social Class
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What types of Class indicators do we find in U.S. language?
Verbal evaluation
 What people say about other people in their society.
Patterns of association
 Who interacts with whom, how, and in what context.
Symbolic indicators
 Activities and possessions indicative of class position.
Differences in life chances
 High-status people generally live longer and in better health
than people of low status.
But not all societies are stratified or egalitarian, some are open class societies...
Are we an open-class society?
• Open-class societies are those with the
easiest social mobility.
• Degree of mobility is related to education
or type of family organization that prevails
in a society.
• Where the extended family is the norm,
mobility tends to be severely limited.