Social Stratification and Political Power

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard Bendix
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Interest Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tacit Assumptions ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Insight Into

Contemporary studies of political power have often been based on the belief that the major determinants in the struggle for power may be ascertained by analyzing the social stratification of a society. This belief is supported by the following series of more or less tacit assumptions: The ideas and actions of men are conditioned by their social and economic position in society. When large number of individuals occupy a comparable social position, they may be expected to think and act alike. They are likely to share social and economic interests which are promoted—in competition or conflict with other social groups—through political organization and interest-representation. Hence, a study of politics should be concerned with the social composition of the members and leaders of different political organizations; this kind of knowledge will provide a clue to the power which such organizations can exert and to the political goals which their leaders are likely to pursue.I wish to examine the relation between stratification and politics in four respects:(1) How did Marx deal with the problem of social stratification and political power?(2) What insight into the relation between stratification and politics can be gained from retrospective investigations?(3) Does a knowledge of social stratification enable us to understand the development of totalitarian movements and their conquest of power?

The Anthropological Lens

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Accountability ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Local People ◽  
South Sudanese ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Encounters ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
Insight Into

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged. This book then is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard’s theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard’s anthropology.

Notions of property: traditional land use and boundaries in the Deh Cho region

Polar Record ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol J. Brown-Leonardi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Property Ownership ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consumer Interests ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Traditional Land Use

ABSTRACTThe Deh Cho Dene have been negotiating territorial land since early European settlement. This paper argues that the changing needs of Deh Cho Dene society has changed their concept of property and this transformation has evolved with a responsibility to conserve cultural practice and ecological balance in Deh Cho Dene territorial lands. The article considers how the changing need of European society addresses property and ownership in the context of basic human rights and consumer interests. It uses the theories of Macpherson, Locke, and Marx to construct a model to understand the property relations that exist in the Deh Cho Dene region. Accordingly, the paper addresses oral narratives to give historical insight into the relations between neighbouring tribal groups and their understanding of territorial boundaries. An account of present day negotiations highlights the various initiatives taken to protect traditional interests and uphold historical claim to the territory. The negotiation of joint ventures and property ownership has evolved with concerns over ecological sustainability and the protection of a subsistence lifestyle, which is critical for the social and economic interests of Deh Cho Dene culture, and is closely connected to the land.

THE COMPREHENSION OF THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND ITS FORMATION IN LEGAL RELATIONS

2019 ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
Olīvija Tuvi
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Insight Into

Social stratification has played an important role in legal relations since ancient times, because it involved the division of responsibilities between individuals in society. The central concept of the social stratification is a society, whose members interact with each other to ensure their existence. Ensuring the existence involves the division of functions by trying to arrange the social and legal relations, which leads to the process of social group formation and social stratification. Social stratification is also very topical today, because society, despite the equality of people defined in normative acts, is still divided according to different criteria. This work provides insight into concept and historical development of the social stratification, summarizes different ideas and problems about social stratification and its types.

scholarly journals Social Structure and Aristocratic Representation—Red Wax Seal Usage in Hungary in the 15th c

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Ádám Novák ◽  
Balázs Bacsa
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Destruction

One might perceive the Middle Ages as an era of certain rights and privileges. Social stratification or the conformation of a group’s identity were all established around privileges in the Kingdom of Hungary. In the medieval period, as opposed to a modern state, the most important constructors of a group’s identity were privileges. When members of a social group bear identical prerogatives, that group can be recognized as an order or estate. The ecclesiastic order existed side-by-side with the noble estate. In possession of political power were strictly those who were at the top of the strongly hierarchical system. However, in the Kingdom of Hungary, the significance of the ecclesiastical order was dwarfed by the importance of landed nobility. Some five percent of the population was of nobles, who also held political power. Until the end of the 15th century, the members of this stratum were equal in law. Only distinctions in financial situation can be noticed during the 14th and 15th centuries. The first law differentiating the rights within nobility was enacted by the national assembly, the diet of Wladislaus II (1490–1516), in 1498. Only from then on can we speak of gentry and aristocracy. This almost two-century-long process can be observed by examining a representational tool, the usage of red wax in seals. Upon studying medieval Hungarian history, we must use all sources available due to their rapid destruction, hence examining seal usage to explain aristocratic representation. In this paper, we briefly summarize the social structure of medieval Hungary and its traditions in seal usage, and present several unique seals. Our goal is to highlight some connections that historiography would benefit from, to provide new data, and to arouse the interest of a broad spectrum of audiences in Hungarian social history.

Social stratification on the Swahili coast: from race to class?

Africa ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Constantin
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Cost

Opening ParagraphThe analysis of ‘social stratification’ (a polite way of speaking of inequality) is crucial to that of political power, though not easy, regardless of the social group investigated. At the cost of oversimplification, die-hard theoreticians minimise the problem by using ready-made typologies and causal links purporting to explain all living social structures.

The Changing Pressure Community

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Lehman Schlozman ◽  
Sidney Verba ◽  
Henry E. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Political Organizations ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Interest Representation ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Strong Representation ◽  
Special Concern ◽  
Organized Interest

This chapter examines the evolution of the Washington pressure community, assessing changes in the number and distribution of active organizations over a twenty-five-year span. Of special concern is whether these patterns—in particular, the strong representation of business interests in contrast to the economic interests of less economically advantaged—are unique to a 2001 analysis or are a persistent aspect of organized interest representation in Washington. The chapter reveals how most of the organizations new to the pressure community are not organizations that never existed before; rather, they are organizations that have been outside of politics and, for reasons that are less well studied, are activated into politics. Thus the shape of the pressure community is influenced by a number of factors—of which an important one, but far from the only one, is the set of processes by which new political organizations come into being.

National Reconstruction and Social Re-stratification

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yelena Helemäe ◽  
Ellu Saar
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Egalitarian Society ◽  
National Reconstruction ◽  
Formation Phase

IntroductionIn the 1940–50s a totalitarian regime was established and consolidated in Estonia. Socialist society led to a new kind of social stratification and inequality. Stratification under totalitarian, socialist regimes differs from that in Western, capitalist countries. The utopian idea to create an egalitarian society turned into the creation of a hierarchically organized and heavily institutionalized society. Access to political power became the basis for social stratification. Reforms in the early 1990s have led to fundamental changes in the social stratification of Estonian society. The present social situation in Estonia (as in other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe) is characterized by the co-existence of elements of socialist and post-socialist societies, the expected marks of transition. Privatization brings about the emergence of new social strata. Therefore, the new social stratification in Estonia is now in the formation phase, and further changes are still forthcoming.

Perceptual Learning of Vocoded Speech With and Without Contralateral Hearing: Implications for Cochlear Implant Rehabilitation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Martin Chavant ◽  
Alexis Hervais-Adelman ◽  
Olivier Macherey
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Perceptual Learning ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Training Phase ◽  
Monosyllabic Words ◽  
Low Pass ◽  
Contralateral Ear ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Vocoded Speech

Purpose An increasing number of individuals with residual or even normal contralateral hearing are being considered for cochlear implantation. It remains unknown whether the presence of contralateral hearing is beneficial or detrimental to their perceptual learning of cochlear implant (CI)–processed speech. The aim of this experiment was to provide a first insight into this question using acoustic simulations of CI processing. Method Sixty normal-hearing listeners took part in an auditory perceptual learning experiment. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of three groups of 20 referred to as NORMAL, LOWPASS, and NOTHING. The experiment consisted of two test phases separated by a training phase. In the test phases, all subjects were tested on recognition of monosyllabic words passed through a six-channel “PSHC” vocoder presented to a single ear. In the training phase, which consisted of listening to a 25-min audio book, all subjects were also presented with the same vocoded speech in one ear but the signal they received in their other ear differed across groups. The NORMAL group was presented with the unprocessed speech signal, the LOWPASS group with a low-pass filtered version of the speech signal, and the NOTHING group with no sound at all. Results The improvement in speech scores following training was significantly smaller for the NORMAL than for the LOWPASS and NOTHING groups. Conclusions This study suggests that the presentation of normal speech in the contralateral ear reduces or slows down perceptual learning of vocoded speech but that an unintelligible low-pass filtered contralateral signal does not have this effect. Potential implications for the rehabilitation of CI patients with partial or full contralateral hearing are discussed.

Doing Bodhisattva’s Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-32
Author(s):  
Le Hoang Anh Thu
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The State ◽  
Ho Chi Minh City ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
The Social

This paper explores the charitable work of Buddhist women who work as petty traders in Hồ Chí Minh City. By focusing on the social interaction between givers and recipients, it examines the traders’ class identity, their perception of social stratification, and their relationship with the state. Charitable work reveals the petty traders’ negotiations with the state and with other social groups to define their moral and social status in Vietnam’s society. These negotiations contribute to their self-identification as a moral social class and to their perception of trade as ethical labor.

The Ideology of Socialism and the Armenian Political Parties

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Gegham HOVHANNISYAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Given

The article covers the manifestations and peculiarities of the ideology of socialism in the social-political life of Armenia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. General characteristics, aims and directions of activity of the political organizations functioning in the Armenian reality within the given time-period, whose program documents feature the ideology of socialism to one degree or another, are given (Hunchakian Party, Dashnaktsutyun, Armenian Social-democrats, Specifics, Socialists-revolutionaries). The specific peculiarities of the national-political life of Armenia in the given time-period and their impact on the ideology of political forces are introduced.

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