Chap 8 ee

Raymond Hames Author

08/25/2017 Added

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Narrated Power Point for Chap. 8 in Ember and Ember

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[00:00:01.648]Good afternoon, everyone.
[00:00:03.312]Now we're on to chapter eight, social stratification
[00:00:07.298]with a special focus on class, ethnicity, and racism
[00:00:11.368]as being dimensions of stratification.
[00:00:14.374]So we're gonna be looking at the variation degree
[00:00:17.135]of social inequality that we find cross culturally.
[00:00:21.002]And we'll talk a bit about egalitarian societies,
[00:00:23.721]ranked societies, and class societies.
[00:00:26.398]In egalitarian societies, there is equality
[00:00:29.940]among men, not women, however.
[00:00:34.403]Sexual inequality is present in all these different kinds
[00:00:38.382]of stratification systems,
[00:00:40.257]whether we're talking about egalitarian,
[00:00:42.065]rank, or class societies.
[00:00:44.336]So what we have is a movement from where
[00:00:47.998]there is very little in the way of status
[00:00:49.785]or power differentials in egalitarian societies
[00:00:52.591]to where there are large differences in class societies.
[00:00:55.681]And we'll look at the relationship
[00:00:57.208]between racism and inequality,
[00:01:00.600]ethnicity and inequality,
[00:01:02.625]and a little bit about the emergence of stratification
[00:01:05.145]that pretty much came with the development of the state
[00:01:12.130]and their kind of rank and class social systems.
[00:01:15.901]So, social stratification
[00:01:18.289]has to do with the fact that social groups
[00:01:20.484]such as families, classes, and ethnic groups
[00:01:23.247]have unequal access to important advantages
[00:01:26.540]such as economic resources.
[00:01:28.990]That is one group may have greater access to land
[00:01:32.906]than others.
[00:01:33.883]Power in the political realm and prestige.
[00:01:37.648]That is how well they're regarded
[00:01:40.336]by other members of society,
[00:01:42.813]and what kind of special privileges
[00:01:44.684]that may go along with this prestige.
[00:01:47.977]So these are the elements, basically,
[00:01:51.061]of social stratification.
[00:01:54.561]And so we have these three different kinds of societies
[00:01:57.524]I mentioned in the first slide.
[00:01:59.270]Egalitarian societies where
[00:02:01.359]essentially all men are more or less created equal.
[00:02:04.734]There's still sexual inequality going on there.
[00:02:08.066]There are status differences in these societies,
[00:02:10.660]but it's based on your accomplishments,
[00:02:13.506]and not based on, for example,
[00:02:16.224]what sort of accomplishments that your parents had.
[00:02:18.783]You had to essentially earn your respectability,
[00:02:22.968]but it couldn't be passed on to your children.
[00:02:24.590]Ranked societies, here we have the beginning,
[00:02:26.983]although they don't use the term,
[00:02:28.483]I like the term hereditary inequality.
[00:02:30.958]In ranked societies, it means that certain people
[00:02:33.111]have advantages because of who their parents are.
[00:02:36.323]And they have, for example, unequal access
[00:02:40.597]to certain kinds of power and prestige
[00:02:43.732]that are essentially denied other people
[00:02:45.757]who hold lesser ranks because of their parentage.
[00:02:49.086]And then class societies, we get further forms
[00:02:52.252]of inequality that's largely based on possession
[00:02:56.766]of productive resources, largely land,
[00:03:00.988]and also certain kinds of privileges that people have
[00:03:04.729]because of their land owning ability
[00:03:07.907]and some other individuals have very little land,
[00:03:11.194]they may have to work for people who own land
[00:03:13.548]or indeed they may even be slaves in these societies.
[00:03:16.960]We get the beginnings of slavery
[00:03:19.351]in rank and class societies,
[00:03:20.803]it's almost totally absent in egalitarian societies.
[00:03:25.430]And here is in table 8-1, a kind of nice little sort of
[00:03:31.647]differentiation in egalitarian, rank, and class
[00:03:34.331]and cast societies, where there are differences
[00:03:37.370]in economic resources, power, prestige,
[00:03:39.850]and some examples that are mentioned in the text.
[00:03:43.303]And again, over here you see the Yanomamo group
[00:03:46.068]I worked with, and they're essentially
[00:03:48.137]an egalitarian kind of society.
[00:03:54.480]In greater detail, egalitarian societies contain
[00:03:56.998]no social groups with greater or lesser
[00:03:58.861]access to economic resources, power, or prestige.
[00:04:02.240]For example, there may be various lineages or clans.
[00:04:04.961]These are kinship groups.
[00:04:06.706]But these lineages or clans aren't ranked
[00:04:09.145]between one another and so, in any event,
[00:04:14.263]there are no kind of like major status differences
[00:04:17.232]that are not earned as a consequence of your effort.
[00:04:21.060]Again there are slight status differences,
[00:04:23.052]but you know, being a good hunter, a good warrior,
[00:04:26.063]a good mother, you know, increases your social status
[00:04:29.625]but essentially meaning that you have greater prestige
[00:04:33.039]and you're looked upon more favorably.
[00:04:35.078]But these differences aren't very great
[00:04:37.632]and they're essentially earned,
[00:04:39.224]they're not inherited as a consequence
[00:04:41.548]of who your parents are.
[00:04:43.272]Now as I mentioned, in rank societies,
[00:04:44.977]we get the beginning of hereditary equality.
[00:04:47.861]So they contain social groups, largely clans, for example,
[00:04:52.085]that do not have very unequal access
[00:04:55.650]to economic resources or power,
[00:04:57.233]but they do have unequal access to prestige.
[00:05:01.916]So certain clans are kind of more highly regarded,
[00:05:06.177]but as a consequence these units do not have
[00:05:10.195]very unequal access according to the text,
[00:05:13.357]but there is enough unequal access such that
[00:05:17.010]certain clans have greater prestige,
[00:05:22.328]a little bit more power, and this is inherited.
[00:05:25.455]And so you're lucky if you're born into
[00:05:28.467]a highly ranked social group such as clan or lineage,
[00:05:31.960]and both of these are kinship groups
[00:05:33.098]that we'll explore a little bit later in the text.
[00:05:37.847]Then if you look at class societies,
[00:05:40.248]fully stratified or class societies range from
[00:05:42.400]somewhat open to virtually closed class or caste systems.
[00:05:47.396]In an open class system,
[00:05:49.056]basically, one theoretically has the ability
[00:05:52.136]to kind of earn their way up the social hierarchy.
[00:05:55.661]There's a recognition you know, of the existence
[00:05:58.299]of this kind of ability, and people know where they belong
[00:06:03.624]in terms of what part of the class hierarchy,
[00:06:06.715]and when you think about classes,
[00:06:08.737]you're thinking about hierarchies.
[00:06:10.403]I will also talk about caste systems and slavery.
[00:06:15.937]Here is kind of an example of inequality
[00:06:23.074]measured at the global level.
[00:06:25.768]And here we're looking at the first quintile, 20%,
[00:06:30.831]and the fifth quintile, over here,
[00:06:33.734]20% of all the households.
[00:06:35.673]And, for example, if you look at a highly stratified
[00:06:39.132]or unequal society, South Africa,
[00:06:41.852]where we have the top 20% owning 60% of the resources
[00:06:47.183]and the bottom 20% only owning probably about 4%.
[00:06:52.787]And you know, you look at the United States,
[00:06:55.712]we're here kind of right in the middle.
[00:06:59.020]There is a considerable inequality.
[00:07:01.941]But if you look at nations like Japan, Norway,
[00:07:05.109]Italy, Germany, there's less inequality.
[00:07:09.864]And so this is one way of measuring inequality.
[00:07:13.890]Another way of measuring inequality
[00:07:16.735]is to look at the Gini index.
[00:07:19.259]This is an index widely used by economists
[00:07:21.413]and it's beginning to be discussed more and more
[00:07:24.924]in the world today because it's
[00:07:26.392]a rather precise measure of inequality.
[00:07:30.301]So it measures how well that's distributed
[00:07:32.979]in society ranges from one to zero.
[00:07:35.780]If zero, then incomes, I should say are equally distributed,
[00:07:41.796]and if one, then a single individual has all the wealth.
[00:07:45.207]So it's a nice measure.
[00:07:48.097]We won't go into the Lorenz curve and how that's calculated
[00:07:50.865]'cause that's part of the Gini index.
[00:07:53.246]But it can be calculated for wealth,
[00:07:55.301]that is your total class assets, do you own a home,
[00:07:57.819]you have a good bank account, or income,
[00:07:59.720]how much income do you earn on a yearly basis?
[00:08:06.125]In the US using a 2015 data, the Gini index is .47,
[00:08:12.050]so it kinda looks like right in the middle.
[00:08:13.716]But, you know, that figure is hard to interpret.
[00:08:17.911]But let's look at what we look like around the world.
[00:08:21.695]So here we are here, and we look at Mexico,
[00:08:24.821]the United States having, you know,
[00:08:27.545]at this measure over here, .45, on the Gini index.
[00:08:32.747]And this applies to not too many parts of the world.
[00:08:37.877]But if you look at the areas where there's less inequality,
[00:08:41.577]Canada, much of Europe, and to some extent central Europe,
[00:08:48.673]and Australia, you see that these are societies
[00:08:52.217]that have the most, in a sense, class systems
[00:08:55.850]that are most egalitarian because there's less inequality.
[00:09:01.382]To kind of give you a measure,
[00:09:03.232]given that our Gini index is .45,
[00:09:06.792]and here's some data
[00:09:09.767]how that works out in a practical sense.
[00:09:12.011]You've heard about the one percenters, etc., etc.
[00:09:14.838]So the top 1%, and here we're looking at household wealth,
[00:09:18.089]not income, hold 42% of all the wealth in our nation.
[00:09:23.304]The next 4% hold 24 and so that's 5% right here,
[00:09:29.239]own quite a bit.
[00:09:30.097]And then if you'll look at the next 5%,
[00:09:32.898]and that sums to the top 10% essentially hold
[00:09:37.538]88% of all the wealth in the United States.
[00:09:42.291]So that kind of gives you a sense of what that .45
[00:09:45.418]in the Gini index means that we talked about before.
[00:09:51.405]We're talking about class societies,
[00:09:52.612]we can talk about open class societies.
[00:09:54.969]And they're referred to as open
[00:09:57.946]because there is some possibility of moving
[00:10:00.745]from one class to another.
[00:10:02.494]A dream of most of our parents is that we do better
[00:10:07.007]than they do, or at least as well as they've done.
[00:10:10.016]And so the idea of upward mobility.
[00:10:13.146]So we can talk about the degree of openness,
[00:10:16.516]the ability to move up the socioeconomic status,
[00:10:21.031]and then mixed with the degree of inequality
[00:10:24.235]that goes on in a society.
[00:10:26.144]The more there is inequality,
[00:10:28.700]the more difficult it is to move up the socioeconomic scale.
[00:10:34.432]Caste systems, on the other hand, are closed.
[00:10:37.853]They're extremely rigid and closed systems
[00:10:40.738]with caste membership permanently determined at birth.
[00:10:43.790]For example, India provides a good example
[00:10:46.230]of a caste system although there were
[00:10:47.857]European caste systems and Chinese caste systems.
[00:10:50.784]But essentially, if you were born into a family that farmed,
[00:10:56.849]then you could only be a farmer.
[00:10:59.771]You could only marry another farmer.
[00:11:03.581]And you had to restrict your social interactions to farmers.
[00:11:07.407]And so when you had children, they also would become farmers
[00:11:11.924]and this, you know, is a kind of caste system
[00:11:15.378]where people could not essentially move up,
[00:11:20.019]or they couldn't move down in the caste system.
[00:11:24.735]In this caste system, the higher caste
[00:11:26.808]had more privileges and power,
[00:11:29.309]and the lower caste, in fact,
[00:11:30.971]some individual in the caste system
[00:11:33.974]were so low they were called outcasts.
[00:11:36.938]And that literally means they were outside
[00:11:39.093]of the caste system because they were, essentially,
[00:11:43.283]and you've heard this term too, untouchable.
[00:11:46.449]Contact with them was very circumspect
[00:11:49.401]because they believed that they could make you ill
[00:11:52.549]and you just didn't want to hang out with
[00:11:54.869]these icky people, so to speak.
[00:11:57.266]But that's what the ideology of the system said.
[00:12:02.137]And so caste systems have existed
[00:12:05.891]in lots of different places from time to time,
[00:12:08.457]and India's a good classic example of it.
[00:12:11.099]However, there's some legislation the last 20 to 30 years
[00:12:17.563]in India that is attempting to abolish caste
[00:12:22.037]and to kind of have an affirmative action system
[00:12:25.989]where lower caste people have the ability,
[00:12:29.964]aided by the state quota systems,
[00:12:33.011]to enter into the professions that were dominated
[00:12:35.978]by their superior caste members.
[00:12:39.716]Slavery existed in various forms in many times and places
[00:12:43.806]regardless of race and culture.
[00:12:46.367]So slavery is found all over the world,
[00:12:50.638]whether it's in Europe, in Africa,
[00:12:54.584]even native North America, or the east.
[00:12:58.773]But some forms of slavery,
[00:13:00.523]for example in the US, were really rigid.
[00:13:03.298]Essentially it was very difficult to relinquish the status.
[00:13:09.076]In some cases you could kind of
[00:13:10.380]buy your way out of it, if you were lucky,
[00:13:13.180]but in other slavery systems, after a period of time,
[00:13:17.049]then you were free, and so it was more kind of an open
[00:13:21.410]as opposed to a closed system
[00:13:23.447]as it was in the United States.
[00:13:28.242]Racism and inequality is a belief that some races
[00:13:31.820]are inferior to others,
[00:13:33.606]is partially a construct of biology
[00:13:36.774]and it's also a social category.
[00:13:41.000]What we know from modern biological anthropology
[00:13:46.543]there are not discreet races,
[00:13:48.827]they kind of grade into one another.
[00:13:51.805]You can make classifications,
[00:13:54.024]but you say you have five, 15, seven, 12, whatever races.
[00:13:58.957]So there is biological differences,
[00:14:01.840]but these are used as mechanisms for repression
[00:14:05.492]and putting people in their place very frequently,
[00:14:10.556]either if you're one of the favored in power,
[00:14:13.089]at the higher level of society,
[00:14:15.442]or if you're not empowered
[00:14:16.746]and at the lower level of society.
[00:14:18.817]So it becomes a kind of physical marker of your status.
[00:14:23.658]Ethnicity is another way in which
[00:14:25.893]there is kind of inequality.
[00:14:27.728]Aside from racism, refers to common origins in language,
[00:14:30.777]a shared history, and selected culture differences
[00:14:33.744]such as differences of religion
[00:14:35.369]that characterize a group of people.
[00:14:36.711]So here we're talking about, you know,
[00:14:38.957]we have multiethnic societies, the United States is one.
[00:14:41.969]We have lots of different ethnic groups.
[00:14:44.086]And your ethnicity can determine your status
[00:14:48.478]in a stratified system, either favoring or disfavoring you.
[00:14:57.065]Social stratification appears to have emerged
[00:14:59.410]relatively recently in human history,
[00:15:01.776]about 8,000 years ago based on archeological evidence.
[00:15:05.348]And so it essentially comes just after the development
[00:15:08.959]of agriculture at the growth of large civic centers
[00:15:15.225]and the development, ultimately, of the state
[00:15:17.850]is associated with increasing evidence
[00:15:20.254]of social stratification.
[00:15:23.216]Here's some highlight sections in the text
[00:15:25.365]I want you to look at.
[00:15:26.260]We have one on global inequality.
[00:15:28.973]And this is really kind of curious what's going on
[00:15:31.377]here in that first inset.
[00:15:33.778]Global inequality has increased.
[00:15:35.610]But, overall, for the entire world the important issues,
[00:15:40.088]overall health, education, life expectancy,
[00:15:43.418]have increased worldwide even though
[00:15:46.184]we've had increase in global inequality.
[00:15:48.989]So kind of like the, if you will,
[00:15:51.630]the good news and the bad news.
[00:15:53.339]And then there's a section that talks about
[00:15:55.739]inequality in the US and how African Americans
[00:15:58.613]have shorter lifespans than white Americans and others,
[00:16:05.766]and talks about all sorts of kind of health disparities.
[00:16:09.543]And to a certain extent this is clearly
[00:16:13.490]a consequence of poverty and racism.
[00:16:17.476]One would wonder, what does racism have to do
[00:16:20.441]as an independent factor that would affect your health?
[00:16:24.101]And this makes us turn to the Whitehall study
[00:16:26.663]and the Marmot Review in England.
[00:16:29.346]If you look at the English, and those who are in
[00:16:34.633]the social services, in government kind of work,
[00:16:40.247]they all have access to the same health system,
[00:16:45.604]the national health system.
[00:16:47.392]And it turns out that people who have high-paying,
[00:16:50.221]high status jobs, the managers,
[00:16:53.104]have fewer health problems than people who are kind of
[00:16:57.503]at the lower end of the social hierarchy.
[00:17:01.893]Now this is in spite of the fact
[00:17:04.534]that they have the same access to health care,
[00:17:08.597]the same quality of health care.
[00:17:10.672]And what this research is showing is that
[00:17:14.533]the fact of being lower status can be stressful
[00:17:18.562]for many individuals,
[00:17:20.019]and this has negative consequences for their health.
[00:17:24.949]And so the very fact of inequality
[00:17:27.708]can lead to shorter lifespans,
[00:17:31.987]greater frequencies of morbidity,
[00:17:33.823]that is being ill,
[00:17:36.061]independent of the kind of medical resources
[00:17:40.208]you have available to you.
[00:17:43.052]So that kind of tells you how perhaps racism,
[00:17:47.159]since one is subjected
[00:17:48.665]to kind of a lower status kind of life,
[00:17:52.286]can have a negative consequence for your health.
[00:17:56.683]Here are some terms and concepts.
[00:17:58.998]Know the difference between egalitarian, ranked,
[00:18:02.010]and stratified societies or class societies.
[00:18:05.547]And you have that nice table in there to give you a sense.
[00:18:10.587]Sexual inequality exists in all of the above.
[00:18:13.964]It still exists, obviously, today
[00:18:16.463]but I would say sexual inequality is weaker today,
[00:18:21.682]even though it still exists,
[00:18:22.959]than it has been in human history.
[00:18:26.132]Note about class societies,
[00:18:28.979]the difference between open and closed,
[00:18:30.564]talking about caste systems and slavery systems.
[00:18:33.534]Race and ethnicity as sources of inequality
[00:18:36.743]within a multiethnic nation.
[00:18:39.265]And we are a multiethnic nation, England, Canada, Australia,
[00:18:45.043]lots of countries around the world are multiethnic
[00:18:47.810]because they have lots of different ethnic groups.
[00:18:50.982]For example, if you take a nation like Brazil,
[00:18:55.415]you've got lots of Italians that have moved in,
[00:18:57.624]Japanese that have moved in,
[00:18:59.945]and all sorts of other ethnic groups,
[00:19:02.226]so they're kind of like the United States, a melting pot.
[00:19:05.441]And race and ethnicity are sources of inequality
[00:19:10.077]in all these kind of multiethnic societies.
[00:19:14.224]And differences in wealth, power, and prestige
[00:19:16.990]characterize stratification,
[00:19:18.924]and know something about the Gini index,
[00:19:22.213]even though we haven't discussed
[00:19:24.246]the mathematical basis of it in any kind of detail.
[00:19:29.614]It's an important measure of inequality
[00:19:33.025]whether it has to do with income or wealth.
[00:19:35.992]Okay, that should end this chapter.

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Chap 8 ee

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