UNIT 9: inequality in the contemporary world

stratification:

recognizable structural hierarchy of people wherein some members have more access to wealth, power, and prestige than others

critiquing the “inequality hypothesis”:

overwhelming necessity evidence from archaeology, anthropology, kindred disciplines is beginning to give us a fairly clear idea of what the last 40,000 years of human history really looked like, and in no way does it resemble the conventional narrative - our species did not, in fact spend most of its history in tiny bands; agriculture did not mark an irreversible threshold in social evolution; the first cities were often robustly egalitarian

ascribed statuses:

social positions people are assigned at birth

achieved statuses:

social positions people may attain later in life, often as a result of their own (or other people’s efforts

privilege: (3)

the experience of advantage, status, power and opportunities by specific individuals or groups of individuals in society

• occupation/position of status/power by those with privilege is unchallenged and the system and structure remains intact and naturalized

• these structures are designed for and by those who occupy positions of authority, thus making it very difficult to overcome or move between statuses

systemic inequality:

when institutions, norms, and practices privilege certain identifiable groups over others - over generations, these privileges and disadvantages are compounded and naturalized, creating enduring inequalities between groups

4 categories of inequality:

1. gender

2. sex

3. sexuality

4. language

5 (new) categories of inequality:

1. class

2. caste

3. race

4. ethnicity

5. nationality

all of which are cultural inventions designed to create invisible boundaries around one community or another

many people employ ____ _____ to justify systems of inequality and privilege:

naturalizing discourses - the deliberate representation of particular identities as if they were a result of biology or nature rather than history or culture, making them appear eternal and unchanging

strategic essentialism: (3)

the use of essentialist rhetoric as a conscious political strategy to create a temporary solidarity to facilitate a specific social action

• most activists are aware that essentialized identities have no scientific validity however they regardless press their claims, hoping that by stressing their differences they may be able to extract concessions that the national government cannot refuse without violating its own laws

• criticized because some say it uses the same format that has oppressed us and reproduced oppression

class: (2)

classes are hierarchically arranged social groups defined on economic grounds, where higher ranked social classes have disproportionate access to resources, sources of wealth and lower ranked classes have much limited access to wealth and most resources

• class is neither wholly ascribed nor achieved but rather a combination that is better understood as a privilege or disadvantage

caste:

ascribed and closed system wherein societies are divided into a hierarchy of ranked subgroups, each of which was “chaste” in the sense that sexual and marital links across group boundaries are forbidden (groups were endogamous)

caste in india has two important terms:

• varna

• jati

varna:

refers to the widespread notion that indian society is ideally divided into four functional subdivisions; priests, nobility (rulers and warriors), commoners (farmers and merchants), and labourers and servants

jati:

refers to localized, named, endogamous groups - although names are frequently the occupations (ex: farmer) there is no one conventional way to group the many local jatis within one of the four varnas which is why they can disagree with others about to which they ought to belong

racialism:

the construction, maintenance, and belief in the existence of biologically distinct “races”

racism:

the systemic oppression and discrimination of people based on their membership in racial or ethnic groups that are typixalky historically marginalized

environmental racism:

gaining recent attention in public/scholarly understandings of inequality based on the fact that many racialized groups have limited access to good land or neighborhoods and the places they do live disproportionately become sites for toxic infrastructure and dumping

• ex: number of boil water advisories in FN communities in canada

species:

a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature

alleles:

most genes come in a variety of forms (alleles)

inescapable conclusion from alleles is that…

humankind is not divided into a series of genetically distinct units (race) the boundaries said to define human races have been culturally imposed on shifting and unstable clusters of alleles

cline:

the gradual intergradation of genetic variation from population to population

racialization:

process of assigning people or groups of people to categories of race that historically have been oppressed by colonial powers and continue to experience inequality - once this happens, members of a society can treat racialized categories as if they reflect biological reality, using them to build institutions that include or exclude particular races

whiteness:

a socially constructed and context specific process in which people who appear as white and are not racialized possess power and privilege in society - this power/privilege is normalized and their language, behaviour, and identity become the unmarked standard

hypodescent: (3)

• historically defined blackness

one drop of blood rule where children of mixed union are always assigned to the subordinate group

• mixed kid = black; in order to expand/secure unpaid labour thru african enslavement

blood quantum: (3)

• historically defined indigeneity

measured indigeneity by levels of purity (full, half, quarter, etc.)

• purpose of this was to dilute, assimilate and even eliminate indigenous people through genocide to secure european control of land and resources

colourism:

a system of social identities negotiated, based on the situation, along a continuum of skin colours between white and black

ethnic groups:

social groups whose members distinguish themselves (and/or are distinguished by others) in terms of ethnicity

ethnicity:

difficult to define because it is often used interchangeably with race, culture, nation, religion, sociolinguistic identity and minority status = today, most commonly used to describe groups who have a minority status in a nation-state; socially constructed identity that is particularly fluid, context specific and dynamic

how does race differ from ethnicity?

race differs from ethnicity precisely because it is used to mark and stigmatize certain peoples as essentially and irreconcilably different, while treating the privileges of others as normative, this quality of difference, whether constructed through a bio determinist or cultural idiom, is what constitutes the social category and material phenomena of race

ethnic cleansing:

forced out migration of a minority from a nation state

genocide:

intent to destroy the culture or exterminate a racialized, ethnic, national or religious group

nation-states:

a political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide

nations:

a group of people believed to share the same history, culture, language and territory, often using the symbolism of shared blood

nationalism (nation-building):

the attempt made by government officials to instill a sense of attachment and belonging into the citizens of a state

transformist hegemony:

a nationalist program to define nationality in a way that preserves the cultural domination of the ruling group while including enough cultural features from subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty

intersectionality: kenneth guest

an analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender and class intersect to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification

intersectional approach insists that analyses focus that focus…

only a single dimension of identity and inequality can sometimes end up neglecting the specific experiences of individuals

caste in india is an example of what kind of status?

an ascribed status

varna: IC

refers to the widespread notion that indian society is ideally divided into four subdivisions; priests, nobility, commoners and labourers or servants

jati being endogamous means…

a person is expected to marry within their own jati

discuss how jati are ranked in india: (4)

they are ranked on a scale from the purest to the most polluted according to both the foods they eat and the occupations they hold

• brahmins (priests) = vegetarian

• clean/pure meat eaters = saltmakers, farmers, sheperds (sheep, goat, chicken, fish)

• unclean/unpure meat eaters = stoneworkers, basket weavers, leather workers who eat beef/pork

horizontal mobilization:

phenomenon in which similarly ranking mid level jatis organize together to support political parties that would protect their interests, which are often class interests - the same mid level jatis sometimes resort to violence to prevent the upward economic mobility of low ranking jatis

note that it is only with _______ that phenotypical differences started to gain importance in distinguishing different groups of humans from one another:

colonization

colourism: IC

classificatory system by lancaster, where there are no fixed race boundaries, rather, individuals negotiate their colour identity anew in every social situation they enter, with the result that the colour they might claim or be accorded changes from situation to situation

biopower: (2)

term by michel foucault, the idea that power in modern societies works in part through the efforts of governments to manage and discipline populations

• census is an example of biopower (and census taking itself can contribute to racial ideologies and worldviews)

nation: IC

a group of people believed to share the same history, culture, language and even physical substance - one of the ideas that substituted for the divine rule of kings

benedict anderson definition of nation:

imagined political community - the nation is imagined because even the members of the smallest community will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear from them and yet in the minds of each lives their communion

nation-state: IC

conceived of as an entity in which national identity and political territory would coincide, came to be viewed as the ideal political unit - emphasis on nation states can lead to a sense that every nation is entitled to its own state - giving rise to social movements demanding a separate nation state for a group of people who feel themselves to be a coherent nation (ex: quebecois)