How Are Societies Organized?

Commonalities Across Time and Space

The Diversity of Human Societies

• Can Indians of different castes (such as Brahmins and Untouchables) marry?

• Can Sudanese women divorce their husbands?• Do Inuit (Eskimo) couples live with the wife or

the husband’s family? • Can women marry women in Kenya?

Browse the worldwide database, the Human Relations Area Files http://www.yale.edu/hraf/

Sex (biologically attributed)and

Gender (socially attributed)

• Culture- specific distinctions are made on the basis of practical issues and power relations

• Ex: berdache and two-spirits questions ‘womens’ and ‘mens’ roles

Alternative gender roles were among the most widely shared features of North American societies. Male berdaches have been documented in over 155 tribes. In about a third of these groups, a formal status also existed for females who undertook a man’s lifestyle, becoming hunters, warriors, and chiefs.

What is the History of Gender Roles?

• Women and men valued equally through most of human history

• Evidence of women’s subordination first appears about 5000 years ago

• Related to new economic roles in socially stratified societies

• Associated with the appearance of states

• Accompanied by thinking that attributes behavioral differences to biology, not culture

• This thinking is like the arguments that support racism

• Motivated by states’ attempts to control fertility (the means of RE-production) and thus facilitate state control over labor, inheritance, military service, etc

Age

• Traditionally, age has been associated with greater wisdom and this “knowledge-authority” recognized with special treatment.

• Contemporary society undermines this in several ways (ex. rapid technological change, the spatial and social distancing of older members from younger members of the society)

Kinship and Family

These basic social units vary in composition and structure, but all societies have them:

• basic reproduction and inheritance unit

• support (economic, social, emotional, moral, etc)

• protects children

Marriage:A Domestic Partnership found

Throughout the Worldforms and rules vary but all • impose rules of sexual access• ensure children are provided for• clarify inheritance rules

examples of rules: • ‘woman marriage’ among the Kipsigis of Kenya• levirate (woman marries brothers) and sororate

(man marries sisters)• exogamy (marriage outside the community) and

endogamy (marriage within the community)• descent and residence: matrilineal/matrilocal,

patrilineal/patrilocal, bi-lineal/bi-local• polygyny (more than one wife) and polyandry

(more than one husband)

Common Interests and Identities

• ethnicity, community, politics, religion, etc

Status

standing in society relative to others within one’s group.

• ascribed (at birth) (ex. the UK royal family)

• achieved (won through merit) (ex. Abraham Lincoln among US presidents)

Class

• broad categories of economic status and social position

• elaborate systems of learned behavior formed around core values (ex: simplicity and directness vs. elaborated ritual and diplomacy

• Caste, in which social class is ascribed at birth and is the same as the birth family, contrasts with the fluid US class system which promises upward mobility through education, wealth acquisition, etc

Role

• function in society • both in kinship (mother,

uncle, daughter, nephew, etc)

• and in occupation (firefighter, lawyer, sanitation worker)

• individuals have multiple roles in society

Ranking

• position in a hierarchy (ex. Canadian court system, US military)

Heterarchy

• System by which individuals or other units are unranked, or ranked according to changing needs

• All societies have both hierarchical and heterarchical aspects