Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Stratification

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Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Stratification
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Gender and Anthropology

• interest in hierarchical relations between men
  and women has been a feature of anthropology
  since its earliest days
• anthropology of gender has been key in
  establishing that sexual inequality is not a
  biological fact but instead and cultural and
  historical one
• the body is "simultaneously a physical and
  symbolic artifact, both naturally and culturally
  produced, anchored in a particular historical
  moment" (Scheper-Hughes Lock)

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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

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SEX, SEXUALITY, GENDER

• not the same thing
• all societies distinguish between males and
  females
• a very few societies recognize a third, sexually
  intermediate category

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SEX

• differences in biology
• Socially culturally marked/constructed

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SEXUALITY (reproduction)

• all societies regulate sexuality
• lots of variation cross-culturally
• degree of restrictiveness not always consistent
  through life span
• adolescence vs. adulthood
• Varieties of normative sexual orientation
• Heterosexual, homosexual, transexual
• Sexuality in societies change over time

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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 from social
  cultural rather than biological point of view

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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
  third sex-third gender
• gender stratification - unequal distribution of
  rewards (socially valued resources, power,
  prestige, personal freedom) between men women
  reflecting their position in the social hierarchy

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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 womens roles,
  statuses, power, and value differ tremendously by
  culture

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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

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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

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a long running controversy in anthropology

• Sherry Ortners 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

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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

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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

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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

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Third Gender Cross-Culturally

• 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.

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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)

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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

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Social difference

• Basis for recognition of difference within and
  between social groups
• Relationship to political power and inequality
• Beyond the face to face community

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Status Social Difference

• status - ascribed achieved
• ascribed status - social positions that people
  hold by virtue of birth
• sex, age, family relationships, birth into class
  or caste
• achieved status - social positions attained as a
  result of individual action
• shift from homogeneous kin based societies
  (mechanic) to heterogeneous societies of
  associations (organic) involves growth in
  importance of achieved

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Social Stratification

• inequality in society
• the unequal distribution of goods and services,
  rights and obligations, power and prestige
• all attributes of positions in society, not
  attributes of individuals
• Stratified society is
• when a society exhibits stratification it means
  that 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

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race

• There are no biological human races
• up until 14th cent. in Europe cultural social
  evolution based on the idea of progress from
  kin-based societies to civil society through
  governance law
• after 16th cent. in Europe ideas of blood were
  used to characterize difference

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race and social difference

• Race as social grouping based on perceived
  physical differences and cloaked in the language
  of biology
• social races groups assumed to have a
  biological basis but social constructed
• Racism systematic social and political bias
  based on idea of race
• Operates as a form of class

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Social races

• Race exists as a cultural construct
• Racism builds upon idea that personality is
  linked with hereditary characteristics which
  differ between races
• Race is important for academics studying local
  discourses on ethnicity
• Race relations as a special case of ethnicity
• Race as the categorization of people
• Operates as an ASCRIBED status of personhood

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American Anthropological Assoc. statement on race

• Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g.,
  DNA) indicates that most physical variation,
  about 94, lies within so-called racial groups.
• Conventional geographic racial groupings differ
  from one another only in about 6 of their
  genes.
• Race thus evolved as a world view, a body of
  prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human
  differences and group behavior.
• The racial world view was invented to assign
  some groups to perpetual low status, while others
  were permitted access to privilege, power, and
  wealth

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from race to ethnicity

• ethnicity forged in the process of historical
  time
• subject to shifts in meaning
• shifts in referents or markers of ethnic identity
• subject to political manipulations
• ethnic identity is not a function of primordial
  ties, although it may be described as such
• always the genesis of specific historical forces
  that are simultaneously structural cultural

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building blocks of ethnicity/ethnic identity

• associated with distinctions between language,
  religion, historical experience, geographic
  isolation, kinship, notions of race (phenotype)
• may include collective name, belief in common
  descent, sense of solidarity, association with a
  specific territory, clothing, house types,
  personal adornment, food, technology, economic
  activities, general lifestyle

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cultural markers of difference must be visible to
members and non-members

• valued markers of difference by insiders may
  become comic or derided by outsiders
• caricature and exaggeration frequently mark
  outsider depictions of boundary mechanisms
• stereotype is one form

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ethnicity and boundaries

• where there is a group there is some sort of
  boundary
• where there are boundaries there are mechanisms
  for maintaining boundaries
• cultural markers of difference that must be
  visible to members and non-members
• Code switching
• Marked and unmarked categories

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Boundary maintenance

• Social boundaries that may have territorial
  counterparts
• The ethnic boundary canalizes social life
  complex organization of behavior and social
  relations playing the same game
• Distinctions between us and them criteria for
  judgement of value and performance and
  restrictions on interactions
• Allows for the persistence of cultural
  differences
• Identities are signaled as well as embraced
• All ethnic groups in a poly-ethnic society act to
  maintain dichotomies and differences

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ethnogenesis

• fluidity of ethnic identity
• ethnic groups vanish, people move between ethnic
  groups, new ethnic groups come into existence
• ethnogenesis
• emergence of new ethnic group, part of existing
  group splits forms new ethnic group, members of
  two or more groups fuse

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political organization and ethnicity

• ethnicity is founded upon structural inequities
  among dissimilar groups into a single political
  entity
• based on cultural differences similarities
  perceived as shared

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Ethnicity as identity formation and political
organization

• Ethnic groups those human groups that entertain
  a SUBJECTIVE belief in their common descent
  because of similarities of physical type or of
  customs or of both, or because of memories of
  colonization and migration
• Belief in group affinity can have important
  consequences for the formation of a political
  community
• feelings of ethnicity associated behavior vary
  in intensity within groups ( persons) over time
  space