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 Alternative gender roles were among the
most widely shared features of North
two-spirits American societies. Male berdaches have
questions ‘womens’ been documented in over 155 tribes. In
about a third of these groups, a formal
and ‘mens’ roles 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 World
forms 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