ANT-2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Casta, Ascribed Status, Social Inequality
Document Summary
Ascribed status: race , ethnicity, gender and caste. Each system takes on local specificities depending on the context. Refers to people who are cut off from their roots or to literate and successful people who retain some indigenous cultural practices. These systems share some important features with each other and with class-based systems. Relegate large numbers of people to particular levels of entitlement to livelihood, power, security, esteem, freedom. Those with greater entitlements dominate those with lesser entitlements. Members of the dominant groups tend to seek to maintain their positions, consciously or unconsciously. Through institutions that control ideology among the dominated and through institutions that physically suppress potential rebellion or subversion by the dominated. In spite of efforts to maintain systems of dominance, instances of subversion and rebellion do occur, indication the potential for agency among the oppressed. Racial strat is a relatively recent form of social inequality.
