lecture on social groups and gender roles
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
1/30
SOCIAL GROUPS
AND GENDERROLES
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
2/30
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
3/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Not all human groups are equal to one another
in terms of wealth, prestige or power.
Forms of social inequality based on gender,class, caste, ethnicity and nationalism.
Ways societies attempt to justify forms of
inequality by making them appear unchangeable
and eternal, rather than the result of historical
practices
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
4/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Some patterns of
inequality e.g. gender,class, caste reach back
thousands of years intohuman history
Others e.g. race, ethnicityand nationality are morerecent in origin and
closely associated withchanges happening inEurope
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
5/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES The spread of capitalism and
colonialism reshaped formsof stratification that predatedtheir arrival
Introduced new forms of
stratification into formerlyindependent egalitariansocieties
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
6/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Prior to the 1970s male dominance was
thought to be a feature of all societies
Feminist anthropologists such as Collier,Rosaldoable to show that the roles of men
and women within families varied enormously,
cross-culturally and historically
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
7/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES The nuclear family far from universal
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
8/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND
GENDER ROLES
Developed as a historical consequence of
industrial capitalism
Marxist-feminist anthropologists such as
Leacock womens subordination could
be connected to the rise of privateproperty and the emergence of the state
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
9/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Used ethnographic and historical evidence
from North and South America, Melanesia,
Africa to show how Western capitalistcolonization had transformed egalitarian
precolonial indigenous gender relations
into unequal, male dominated genderrelations
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
10/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Recently, a recognition that gender needs to be
discussed beyond the phenotypic male and female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BwleH5n5eY
There are social roles that are recognized as female
but performed by males
What is Gender?
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
11/30
SOCIAL GROUPS
AND GENDERROLES
How do we account for the
different status of womenamong these societies?
Previously, a male bias
until 1970s when women
entered the field
Image of man the hunter
became balanced with
woman the gatherer
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
12/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Most people cannot see the forest for the
trees
Anthropology makes us look at the forest
the whole package of economic and
environmental factors that produced a
given culture and its customsAre women exploited?
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
13/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Marxist model preindustrial societies
e.g. hunter-gatherers people kill
or produce just what they need Egalitarian no group exploits
another
Capitalism brought class structure
emergence of an exploiting group
that grew rich on the labours of
others
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
14/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES Inevitably, there would arise conflict
between owners and workers
Result would be a classless socialistsystem
Marx not overly concerned with gender
and status differences
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
15/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND
GENDER ROLES Friedrich Engelsadded sex to
Marxist economies
He believed wealth increased mans position inthe family causing the woman to be subjugated
Engels believed that a return to classless
societies would reunite the sexes
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
16/30
WORKING WITHIN
CONSTRAINTS Hausa women Northern
Nigeria
Women live within theseclusion of purdah once
they marry
Yet somehow they remain
active in the marketplace
They cannot move in the
public markets themselves
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
17/30
WORKING WITHIN
CONSTRAINTS They employ their children buying and selling
goods
E.g. Binta
11 years old
goes to market
sellbean cakes, porridge etc. made by her mother
Also runs errands for raw materials
Money that is collected supplements the family
income
Her mother is able to maintain an income
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
18/30
WORKING WITHIN
CONSTRAINTS Children also establish a
trade network that will be
used in later years as
adults
http://hausaonline.wordpr
ess.com/2010/08/05/bbc-
hausa-childrens-life-in-niger/
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
19/30
CONTROL OF
RESOURCES Ernestine Friedlasserts that
control of scarce resources is thekey to power and dominance
Four kinds of hunting/gatheringsocieties:
a) cooperative male and female
labour in foraging
sexual equality b) men and women forage
separately for individual needs.
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
20/30
CONTROL OF RESOURCES
c) men hunt and control distribution of
meat; women gather only for family needs
d) men provision all the food (meat) e.g.
Inuit
Women are used, abused
and traded
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
21/30
CONTROL OF RESOURCES
Agricultural based societies men control
most of the food that is exchanged
womens status correspondingly low Industrial societies women limiting
number of children
Gaining control of goods for distributionbeyond the family
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
22/30
PRODUCTION WHO
CONTROLS IT? Is a woman limited by pregnancy and childbirth?
Maybe societys subsistence needs and its ecology thatset limits on how many children a woman can have
In societies that require considerable female labour, anadaptive strategy would be to generate taboos andsexual customs that would insure a greater spacing ofchildren e.g. !Kung people nurse each child for fouryears and this makes ovulation very irregular
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
23/30
PRODUCTION WHO
CONTROLS IT? Childbearing perfectly compatible with hunting
small game and fishing near home
Not compatible with long distance hunting Most important consequence male control of
meat, a valuable resource. Will result in a
difference in equality
Males acquired a society-wide network of mutual
exchanges and obligations (trade networks),
while womens influence was limited to the
family
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
24/30
HORTICULTURALISTS
Nature of subsistence changed need of a warrior class
to defend property
Fighting like long-distance hunting incompatible with
gathering and childcare
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
25/30
HORTICULTURALISTS
High status requires the
control of scarce resources
Imagine that you controlonly 10% of a Bedouin
tribes resources but that
the 10 percent is their
water
and you will havean inkling of why male
control of protein originally
gave them such power
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
26/30
GENDER
Refers to the cultural construction of sexual difference.
Gender roles are the activities a culture assigns to each
sex
Gender roles vary with environment, economy, adaptive
strategy and type of political system
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
27/30
GENDER
Gender stereotypes oversimplified but
strongly held ideas about the
characteristics of males and females
Gender stratification an unequal
distribution of rewards between men andwomen
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
28/30
GENDER
STRATIFICATION In stateless societies gender
stratification identified as
prestige
E.g. Ilongots of northern Luzon
in the Philippines
Gender differences related to the_____________ cultural value placed onadventure, travel and knowledge of the externalworld
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
29/30
GENDER STRATIFICATION
Ilongot men as headhunters visited distant places
Acquired knowledge of the external world, amassed
experiences there and returned to talk about it in public
oratory
Received acclaim as a result
Ilongot women had inferior prestige because they lacked
external experiences
-
8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles
30/30
SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER
ROLES
http://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofaf
rica.htm
http://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofafrica.htmhttp://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofafrica.htmhttp://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofafrica.htmhttp://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofafrica.htm