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