ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Video:
Age, Common Interest, and
Stratification
http://www.pbs.org/als/
faces_culture/facrdescrip.htm
Comments on Video
1. Criticism of cultural relativist approach to
stratification
2. Berremen on stratification
Berremen on stratification
Berreman, G. D. (1981). Social Inequality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis.
Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches. G.
D. Berreman. New York, Academic Press. pp. 3-4
I believe that stratification . . . is pernicious: It is
humanly harmful in that it is painful, damaging, and
unjust, and it is consistently experienced as such by
those who are deprived and oppressed. . . . It is
responsible for hunger even when there is plenty, for
high mortality, high fertility, and low life expectancy, for
low levels of education, literacy, political participation,
and other measures of the quality of life . . ..
Berremen on stratification (2)
Stratification is also dangerous in that the
poverty, oppression, hunger, fear, and
frustration inherent in it result in resentment
among the deprived and anxiety among the
priveleged, with the result that overt, perhaps
catastrophic, conflict is inevitable. Much of
the source of crime in the street, terrorism,
ethnic conflict, civil war, and international war
is inequality so organized and the alarm,
repression, and competition it engenders . . .
Inequality between peoples and nationals is a
major hreat to societal and even human
survival.
Berremen on stratification
Berreman, G. D. (1981). Social Inequality: A CrossCultural Analysis. Social Inequality: Comparative and
Developmental Approaches. G. D. Berreman. New York,
Academic Press. pp. 3-4
Thermodynamic analysis
Review discussion of social thermodynamics
Communal Societies
Characteristics of Communal Societies
• social order of hunters and gatherers and many
horticultural societies
• usually small populations with geographic
mobility
• an equal obligation to labor, mostly in food
production
• hours of labor about half of modern societies,
about 1000 hours per year
• division of labor by age and sex
Characteristics of Communal Societies
• equal access to the social product, with equal
sharing of the product of human labor,
especially food
• equal assess to violence; no coercive
institutions such as police, armies, courts,
prisons, etc.
• equal access to the sacred and supernatural
[shamans, communal religion]
Characteristics of Communal Societies
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negative features include
high infant mortality,
low life expectancy,
disease,
homicide most frequent cause of male deaths,
low level of development of forces of social
production
Characteristics of Communal Societies
Using the categories of the textbook,
• bands and tribes are both forms of
ancestral communism.
• Chiefdoms are transitional between
ancestral communism and class rule.
• States are systems of class rule.
Class Ruled Societies
Class Ruled Societies
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the social order found in the historic agrarian
civilizations and in modern industrial societies
population divided into two, with differential
access to the social product
the social product is divided into two: the
necessary product, made of of the means of
production and the goods and services consumed
by the direct producers, and the surplus,
consumed by the ruling class
the producing classes, or the direct producers,
put their labor energy into productive system
hours of labor about twice that of classless
societies, about 2000 hours per year
Class Ruled Societies
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•
•
the ruling class put their time and
energy into the system of exploitation
which has three components:
[1] exploitative techniques, such as
plunder, slavery, rent, tribute, and
unequal exchange;
[2] violence, or the State; and
[3] thought control, or the Church
exploitation and surplus value
• Exploitation is the forcible extraction
of surplus from the direct producers by
a class of non-producers. It is an
objective social process which can be
measured independently of the moral
judgment of the observer or the
subjective feeling of the exploited.
The State
•
The State is a social organization controlled by
the ruling class which has an effective monopoly
of legitimate violence. Its primary function is
to protect the property system supporting the
ruling class from internal and external threats,
and hence, protect the wealth and privileges of
the ruling class. It also carries out socially
necessary functions, such as maintaining roads
and irrigation systems and controlling
education.
The Church
•
The Church is a social organization which
controls access to the sacred and supernatural
through a priesthood. It is also controlled by
the ruling class and is used to legitimate the
wealth and privileges of the ruling class and the
violent activities of the State.
Class Ruled Societies
•
•
all systems of class rule are also patriarchal since
men are the chief beneficiaries of the system and
also tend to occupy the chief positions in the
State-Church bureaucracies, and women are the
worst, but not the only, victims of the system
the underlying class division between rulers and
ruled is complicated by an elaboration of
intermediate classes and gradations within the
classes.
Class Ruled Societies
• class: Marxist and bourgeois
conceptions
• class struggle and revolution
That’s all for today!
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Video:
Political Organization
Notes on Video
bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states
!Kung, the Mendi, and the Kpelle
theocratic government of Tibet
The State
• An organization within society that has a
monopoly of legitimate violence
• Protects the wealth and privileges of the
ruling class
Marx on the State
There have been in Asia, generally, from
immemorial times, but three departments of
Government: that of Finance, or the plunder
of the interior, that of War, or the plunder
of the exterior; and finally, the department
of Public Works. (Marx 1853a:90).
Traditional and Modern States
• Traditional states - political office based
on birth, religious basis of legitimacy
• Modern states - elections, human rights
Imperialism
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•
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The direct or indirect rule over foreign areas by a state
or empire
Spanish, British, French and German empires, the
American Empire
Neo-colonialism - economic and social control that is
maintained after nominal political independence is
granted
Domhoff, G. W. (2002). Who Rules America? Power and Politics
in the Year 2000. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.
1. Controls the American economy through its ownership
of corporate stock and by occupying key positions on
the boards of directors in management of major
industrial and financial institutions (co-optation)
2. Controls the American political system through its
financing of campaigns for both the Republican and
Democratic parties and by occupying key positions in
the government
3. Controls the mass media both through direct
ownership and through advertising.
4. Controls education through its control over the major
universities and research foundations (such as the Ford
and Rockefeller Foundations).
President Woodrow Wilson
The masters of the government of the United
States are the combined capitalists and
manufacturers of the United States. … The
government of the United States at present is a
foster-child of the special interests. It is not
allowed to have a will of its own.
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Video:
Religion and Magic
Notes on Video
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American Indians and animism (medicine mask)
Maya & syncretism
Eka Dasa Tudra ritual of the Balinese
Hare Krishnas in Los Angeles
Revitalization movements (Mormons)
Religion and the Church
• Religion is a cultural universal that
exists in all societies
• The Church is a social organization that
uses religion for social control to
support the ruling class
Marx on religion
The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion,
religion does not make man. In other words, religion is
the self-consciousness and self-feeling of man . . .
Marx on religion
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real
distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is
the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless
situation. It is the opium of the people.
Marx on religion
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the
people is required for their real happiness. The demand
to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to
give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of
religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of
woe, the halo of which is religion.
Marx on religion
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from
the chain not so that man will wear the chain
without any fantasy or consolation but so that
he will shake off the chain and cull the living
flower.
More on religion
Two interpretations of term, “opiate”
Additional functions of religion
Additional comments on class
All class systems are also systems of
patriarchy
Complexity of class systems
Class Ruled Societies
•
•
all systems of class rule are also patriarchal since men
are the chief beneficiaries of the system and also tend
to occupy the chief positions in the State-Church
bureaucracies, and women are the worst, but not the
only, victims of the system
the underlying class division between rulers and ruled is
complicated by an elaboration of intermediate classes
and gradations within the classes.
Class Ruled Societies
• class: Marxist and bourgeois
conceptions
• class struggle and revolution
That’s all for today!