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Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression
This book suggests that the major forms in intergroup conflict, such as racism, classism and patriarchy, are essentially derived from the human predisposition to form and maintain hierarchical and group-based systems of social organization. Using social dominance theory, it is presumed that it is also a basic grammar of social power shared by all societies in common. We use social dominance theory in an attempt to identify the elements of this grammar and to understand how these elements interact and reinforce each other to produce and maintain group-based social hierarchy.
416 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 3, 2018
Definitely a book I will chewing over for some time, which alone is enough to recommend it to anyone interested in group inequality. The biggest flaw is the authors' reliance on questionable evolutionary theories of gender-based differences in social dominance orientation to support their otherwise well-supported and more-deserving-of-attention subordinate male target hypothesis. Thankfully for them, I think they're mistaken about the extent to which their theory relies on work in evolutionary psychology, as a relatively simple qualification about how status seeking is gendered in a patriarchal surplus-producing society can account for most of the data they present. (And interestingly, the occasional comments about how economic surplus seems to be necessary for such dynamics to exist hints at the possibly contingent nature of gendered differences in social dominance orientation. In any case, you don't need theories of inherent gender psychological differences to account for there never having been matriarchal societies. And given that most humans were in non-surplus societies until relatively recently is itself a blow against their evolutionary story.)
Overall, an utterly fascinating read and a compelling account of the dynamics of various forms of group inequality.
Overall, an utterly fascinating read and a compelling account of the dynamics of various forms of group inequality.
July 20, 2022
This is pivotal. Social Dominance Theory is a framework for understanding why hierarchies invariably present in human societies, illustrating the presence of various attitudes that reinforce the power of the dominant group (hierarchy enhancing myths) and those that seek to swing the balance in the opposite direction (hierarchy attenuating myths). This is a fairly dense and highly academic text, so be prepared for this. Given the implications of their argument, I think it was imperative they bring their A-game on the point of data and empirical information and they do not disappoint. Sidanius and Pratto do not hold back on the inclusion of robust, statistically sophisticated regression, longitudinal, etc. peer-reviewed models and studies which control for a multiplicity of potentially confounding or distorting variables (and much of the research they actually carried out themselves as opposed to merely lifting it from elsewhere). In other words, when they say that those with a greater degree of Social Dominance Orientation—meaning they favor the reinforcement of social hierarchy—are also more likely to oppose affirmative action, oppose rehabilitation and favor retributive justice (it’s actually pretty creepy that people with strong SDO tend to favor more explicitly violent punishments for black as opposed to white offenders, too), are more supportive of law enforcement, are more opposed to a higher minimum wage, etc. it means they seriously did their math on making sure the methodologies and data sets on which they based these conclusions were airtight.
SDT is an integrated theory, drawing on sociology (including elite theory, pioneered by C. Wright Mills’ “Power Elite”) and psychology as well as political philosophy and other disciplines. Essentially, Social Dominance Theory argues that in any human society in which there is a capital surplus one observes the hierarchical organization of power along the lines of three sets: the age set, the gender set, and the arbitrary set. Age and gender are both universal and constant: we always see power (i.e. control over resources in a society with a capital surplus) skew toward older folks and toward males in ALL human societies (again, very robust scouring of the human sociocultural and sociohistorical record for establishing this conclusion). The arbitrary set is a little bit different. This is something that can vary. Sometimes it is religious-based, sometimes it is caste-based, sometimes it is tribally based, sometimes it is nationality-based, etc. That’s why it is the arbitrary set, because it varies on the basis of an array of dynamics, traits, and characteristics in particular paradigms. The arbitrary set which seems to come with the harshest systems of hierarchy and oppression is the racialized arbitrary set. Surely, in the West and America this is the set for which we have seen the more brutal forms of oppression and exclusion, despite various attempts to create more egalitarian societies. The arbitrary set also interacts with the age and especially the gender set in different ways. This is important; more on this later.
What evidence do we have for the systematic exclusion of the racialized subordinate group individuals by dominant group individuals? Well, a lot. Sidanus and Pratto bring to bear a host of studies covering discrimination in health care, retail, education, housing, and justice. If you are familiar with scholarship on racial bias and institutionalized racism, then you are probably familiar with some of these studies already. As an example, in healthcare (again, controlling for variables so that equivalence is established) black patients are much more likely to be recommended for unnecessarily invasive surgeries such as amputations where white patients will be recommended less devastating solutions. In retail, they cite research showing that inhabitants of predominantly black neighborhoods—I did not just say poor, I said black—pay more for the same goods (such as groceries) on an absolute basis than whites. I am not just talking about food deserts here and the various costs associated with them, I am talking straight about the specific items on an absolute basis. They also cite research on car purchases, in which it is shown (again, they explain and control for negotiation tactics and other factors) black males pay the most for vehicles and white men pay the least (black women get “taxed” a little worse than white women).
Education is also an interesting area. The findings are pretty mind-blowing, but again, the research methods and data are robust. Gifted black students are shown to get the worst treatment. Yeah, you read that right. Don’t believe me? You do not have to. Go see for yourself (convenient reminder, you can rent a copy of the book…you don’t have to buy it). What Sidanius and Pratto find is that it is not the behavior but rather the conformity to expectations that guides teachers’ treatment of students. Because all too often white teachers have low expectations of black students, they wind up neglecting, ignoring, or unduly penalizing them. But it’s mind boggling that black students who are gifted, insightful, etc. actually get more negative marks and evaluations from teachers even without disciplinary infractions. Worse character evaluations than black students WHO PERFORM POORLY. Of course, a separate, better-known matter is that black students are more often harshly disciplined for the same offenses for which white students are let off with light punishments or recommendations for counseling or medication. There’s more here, too, like on standardized testing performance and how when one primes students in different ways, one observes performance disparities between whites and blacks disappear (a serious problem for the eugenicist AKA “human biodiversity” crowd).
We also witness an abundance of evidence of discrimination in housing, with regards to mortgages and lendings as well as rentals and the added burdens and costs associated with housing discrimination both in terms of health (environmental racism), safety (being tracked into more dangerous neighborhoods due to the discriminatory cordoning), and prosperity (often being located far away from areas with better quality jobs, medical care, grocers and retail, etc). Sidanius and Pratto employ the famous audit studies in which researchers have pairs go out and separately inquire about or go to view an apartment. What happens so often? When you are white, the apartment is available. When black. Oh, wow. The apartment is not available, suddenly. They also cover the justice system and the support for police and police violence as well as “tough on crime” policies that have the effect of locking up large swaths of black males for often victimless crimes and, more importantly, the same types of crimes for which white males (and especially females) as oftentimes not even prosecuted for.
Folks love to try to explain a lot of these things away, but again all of these methods are controlling for those other explanations. Many of us have lived these things directly. I know I have (some of them, like housing). However, personal experience is not a substitute for robust empirical data sets. That, we have here.
What explains these curious phenomena? And for whom are they most pernicious? The subordinate target male hypothesis holds that in arbitrary set societies, it is the males of the subordinate group who are most heavily and seriously targeted. Sidanius sticks to the racialized arbitrary set and the numerous examples we see of discrimination against arbitrary set males in the aforementioned areas throughout not just the United States, but Sweden, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and other nations with democratic pretenses (I love the fact that he uses “pretenses,” as this is a more accurate way to describe these nations’ governments). Sidanius even shows that, contrary to racist myths that subordinate males are “more criminal,” even instances in which subordinate group males are more highly educated (e.g. African immigrants to Sweden are more highly educated than native group males), still they face far greater barriers to inclusion and uptake in the host society as a direct result of their status as subordinate group males.
Why? This is because the subordinate group males are viewed as a greater threat to the hegemony of dominant group males. Throughout history, it is groups of males who enter into conflicts between societies which often results in one group of males obtaining dominance over another along various arbitrary sets. Throughout the course of this domination, the subordinate group males always represent the potential for subversion and overthrow and defeat of the dominant group males. Therefore, the threat always looms and dominant group males feel it necessary to target subordinate group males with a rigor and bellicosity that does not extend to subordinate group females.
Another layer to add to this is that subordinate group members are not mere passive beings, being acted upon, but rather actively participate in their own oppression. It is easy to misunderstand this…let me explain. Members of the dominant group produce and disseminate what we call hierarchy-legitimating myths. These are ideas like the Protestant work ethic, just world hypothesis, American exceptionalism, immigrants are threatening, minorities are criminal, affirmative action is bad (interestingly enough, strong SDO folks are softer on affirmative action when white women are beneficiaries…which perhaps explains why they have made greater inroads due to affirmative action to the point where a white female was even the face in that famous Fisher case).
All of these (and other) beliefs accord with SDO. But it is not a mere matter of dominant group folks harboring varying degrees of SDO (and surely they provably, on average, harbor stronger SDO beliefs than subordinate group members). Subordinate group members too can have strong SDO beliefs. However, that does NOT mean they demonstrate a strong bias in favor of the strength of the subordinate group. No, it means they endorse and support the dominant group. This is somewhat supported by the Implicit Association Tests at Harvard that showed it is much more likely for blacks to have a pro-white bias AND to have an anti-black bias than it is for whites to have a pro-black bias AND and anti-white bias. Also, think of the famous Bobo doll experiments in which black children were more likely to select the white doll over the black doll (which actually shifted notably during the Black Power movement before reverting as the Black Power movement was destroyed due to the FBI in the 70s). It’s found that subordinate group members with LOWER SDO attitudes have a stronger in-group bias, this was even reflected in Palestinians. It’s rare for subordinate groups to have even close to the same level of hostility for dominant group members as dominant group members have for them (and there was NO evidence in any of the studies for “reverse racism.”)
The other way minorities participate in their oppression is through their internalization of negative stereotypes about their groups. They are conditioned in ways both subtle and explicit to “play the part.” One example is the point I mentioned about education earlier. And, of course, adopting socially dominant attitudes as a member of a subordinate group is by definition self-defeating, because it implies agreement with or endorsement of policies that are both unwarranted and harmful towards one’s group. However, such views are adopted because subordinate group members are led to believe that such traits are just natural to their culture (“acting black”), that it is dominant group members who know best how to run a society, and, moreover, that the social order is just (remember the just world doctrine as one of the correlates with SDO). So when we see drug abuse, crime, school dropout, and other examples of deviance in subordinate groups, Sidanus and Pratto say about half of this is due to the effects of systematic discrimination (ill-treatment in schools, being more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, executed, etc.) whereas half of it is subordinate group members dyssocially playing out the parts scripted for them due to internalized racism.
Sidanius makes it abundantly clear that the WRONG conclusion to draw here is that SDT establishes that attempting to improve or ameliorate racism in the US and other nations with democratic pretenses is futile. You often hear this type of convenient (for the dominant group) defeatism, “Oh, it’s not going anywhere, might as well accept it.” Well, not really. As Sidanius and Pratto highlight, we have hierarchy-attenuating myths and actions that have served to counteract and undermine racism and dominant group power. I will say Sidanus seems to overstate the effectiveness here, but I think despite the fact that “progress” is far overstated when you take a bird’s eye view of Western societies it is also foolish to write off hierarchy attenuation as wholly ineffectual.
I have a few questions and criticisms. For one, if the condition of hierarchization requires capital surplus, why is it that hominid societies are unequal but hunter gatherer societies are egalitarian? When positing the driving forces behind these structures and the potential biological basis (it’s also incredibly interesting that no matter how you cut it, males ALWAYS have stronger SDO orientations, again controlling for numerous variables and assessing various paradigms), he points to hominids like bonobos. Most of us know hominid societies are very hierarchical, like many mammalian species. Did they have a capital surplus? I think not. So how do we go from that to egalitarian hunter-gatherers? It’s a strange paradox of which I am unsure Sidanus provided an answer prior to his recent passing.
I also question some of their claims and positions on sexism. I largely agree with the subordinate male target hypothesis. However, he frames the discrimination faced by women as being largely paternalistic in nature. As in, dominant group males want to control women and take care of them, regardless of the subordinate groups they hail from but don’t harbor any real hostility toward them. Said differently, when we see harmful policies like in areas of reproductive rights, education, employment, etc. it is not the same type of hostility we see toward subordinate group males at play but a paternalism. I do not know if I agree here. I mean, if that’s the case how do you explain the widespread incidence of rape and sexualized violence against women? I think taking rape in warfare is an even more explicit example, as rape is extremely common in almost all armed conflicts no matter the combatants (e.g. in World War II, Germans and Russians BOTH raped heavily despite the stereotypes placed on Russians). I cannot conceive of any scenario in which that is anything other than nakedly hostile. This does not totally defeat his point, but it does expose it as somewhat tenuous.
Two other criticisms. On the “collaborationist” idea (subordinate group members internalize harmful, self-defeating beliefs and act on them), they cite alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and violence as examples of the pathology. However, numerous studies actually show rates of drug abuse are NOT higher for subordinate groups and that in various measures of violence rates are not vastly different. With alcohol, there are various studies that show people of higher socioeconomic status actually tend to consume MORE alcohol than those of lower status and by a not insignificant degree. Again, these facts do not totally defeat their point but these examples serve to undermine the force of their argument here.
Lastly, and neither Sidanus nor Prato make this argument, but I think they should have addressed this. So, if the arbitrary set invariably results in the creation of hierarchy, then who is to say that a racialized arbitrary set with black or other racialized males at the helm would be any better or different? This is another argument that you sometimes hear and, in fact, has been at the basis of much opposition to and undermining of black efforts at obtaining unencumbered political freedom, that black males will be worse and more dangerous than white men. Sure, it’s a propagandist charade with no legitimate support, but like the best propaganda it is very effective. However, I see no reason to believe all arbitrary sets are created equal or that the emergence of a different arbitrary set under whatever conditions would be meaningfully different or worse. You could argue it the other way, too, but there’s no basis. I don’t have answers, but I wish I would have seen them answer this (as opposed to just saying they are not advocating acceptance of socially dominant paradigms).
Very important work that effectively, compellingly organizes thinking around hierarchy and Western racism and how these types of structures and attitudes continue to be reproduced. There’s a competing theory called Social Identity Theory which also addresses group identity but seems less compelling since it does not adequately explain why members of subordinate groups so often advocate, support and identify with the dominant group. A related work that does, however, do this and which is worth checking out is Systems Justification Theory by John Jost.
SDT is an integrated theory, drawing on sociology (including elite theory, pioneered by C. Wright Mills’ “Power Elite”) and psychology as well as political philosophy and other disciplines. Essentially, Social Dominance Theory argues that in any human society in which there is a capital surplus one observes the hierarchical organization of power along the lines of three sets: the age set, the gender set, and the arbitrary set. Age and gender are both universal and constant: we always see power (i.e. control over resources in a society with a capital surplus) skew toward older folks and toward males in ALL human societies (again, very robust scouring of the human sociocultural and sociohistorical record for establishing this conclusion). The arbitrary set is a little bit different. This is something that can vary. Sometimes it is religious-based, sometimes it is caste-based, sometimes it is tribally based, sometimes it is nationality-based, etc. That’s why it is the arbitrary set, because it varies on the basis of an array of dynamics, traits, and characteristics in particular paradigms. The arbitrary set which seems to come with the harshest systems of hierarchy and oppression is the racialized arbitrary set. Surely, in the West and America this is the set for which we have seen the more brutal forms of oppression and exclusion, despite various attempts to create more egalitarian societies. The arbitrary set also interacts with the age and especially the gender set in different ways. This is important; more on this later.
What evidence do we have for the systematic exclusion of the racialized subordinate group individuals by dominant group individuals? Well, a lot. Sidanus and Pratto bring to bear a host of studies covering discrimination in health care, retail, education, housing, and justice. If you are familiar with scholarship on racial bias and institutionalized racism, then you are probably familiar with some of these studies already. As an example, in healthcare (again, controlling for variables so that equivalence is established) black patients are much more likely to be recommended for unnecessarily invasive surgeries such as amputations where white patients will be recommended less devastating solutions. In retail, they cite research showing that inhabitants of predominantly black neighborhoods—I did not just say poor, I said black—pay more for the same goods (such as groceries) on an absolute basis than whites. I am not just talking about food deserts here and the various costs associated with them, I am talking straight about the specific items on an absolute basis. They also cite research on car purchases, in which it is shown (again, they explain and control for negotiation tactics and other factors) black males pay the most for vehicles and white men pay the least (black women get “taxed” a little worse than white women).
Education is also an interesting area. The findings are pretty mind-blowing, but again, the research methods and data are robust. Gifted black students are shown to get the worst treatment. Yeah, you read that right. Don’t believe me? You do not have to. Go see for yourself (convenient reminder, you can rent a copy of the book…you don’t have to buy it). What Sidanius and Pratto find is that it is not the behavior but rather the conformity to expectations that guides teachers’ treatment of students. Because all too often white teachers have low expectations of black students, they wind up neglecting, ignoring, or unduly penalizing them. But it’s mind boggling that black students who are gifted, insightful, etc. actually get more negative marks and evaluations from teachers even without disciplinary infractions. Worse character evaluations than black students WHO PERFORM POORLY. Of course, a separate, better-known matter is that black students are more often harshly disciplined for the same offenses for which white students are let off with light punishments or recommendations for counseling or medication. There’s more here, too, like on standardized testing performance and how when one primes students in different ways, one observes performance disparities between whites and blacks disappear (a serious problem for the eugenicist AKA “human biodiversity” crowd).
We also witness an abundance of evidence of discrimination in housing, with regards to mortgages and lendings as well as rentals and the added burdens and costs associated with housing discrimination both in terms of health (environmental racism), safety (being tracked into more dangerous neighborhoods due to the discriminatory cordoning), and prosperity (often being located far away from areas with better quality jobs, medical care, grocers and retail, etc). Sidanius and Pratto employ the famous audit studies in which researchers have pairs go out and separately inquire about or go to view an apartment. What happens so often? When you are white, the apartment is available. When black. Oh, wow. The apartment is not available, suddenly. They also cover the justice system and the support for police and police violence as well as “tough on crime” policies that have the effect of locking up large swaths of black males for often victimless crimes and, more importantly, the same types of crimes for which white males (and especially females) as oftentimes not even prosecuted for.
Folks love to try to explain a lot of these things away, but again all of these methods are controlling for those other explanations. Many of us have lived these things directly. I know I have (some of them, like housing). However, personal experience is not a substitute for robust empirical data sets. That, we have here.
What explains these curious phenomena? And for whom are they most pernicious? The subordinate target male hypothesis holds that in arbitrary set societies, it is the males of the subordinate group who are most heavily and seriously targeted. Sidanius sticks to the racialized arbitrary set and the numerous examples we see of discrimination against arbitrary set males in the aforementioned areas throughout not just the United States, but Sweden, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and other nations with democratic pretenses (I love the fact that he uses “pretenses,” as this is a more accurate way to describe these nations’ governments). Sidanius even shows that, contrary to racist myths that subordinate males are “more criminal,” even instances in which subordinate group males are more highly educated (e.g. African immigrants to Sweden are more highly educated than native group males), still they face far greater barriers to inclusion and uptake in the host society as a direct result of their status as subordinate group males.
Why? This is because the subordinate group males are viewed as a greater threat to the hegemony of dominant group males. Throughout history, it is groups of males who enter into conflicts between societies which often results in one group of males obtaining dominance over another along various arbitrary sets. Throughout the course of this domination, the subordinate group males always represent the potential for subversion and overthrow and defeat of the dominant group males. Therefore, the threat always looms and dominant group males feel it necessary to target subordinate group males with a rigor and bellicosity that does not extend to subordinate group females.
Another layer to add to this is that subordinate group members are not mere passive beings, being acted upon, but rather actively participate in their own oppression. It is easy to misunderstand this…let me explain. Members of the dominant group produce and disseminate what we call hierarchy-legitimating myths. These are ideas like the Protestant work ethic, just world hypothesis, American exceptionalism, immigrants are threatening, minorities are criminal, affirmative action is bad (interestingly enough, strong SDO folks are softer on affirmative action when white women are beneficiaries…which perhaps explains why they have made greater inroads due to affirmative action to the point where a white female was even the face in that famous Fisher case).
All of these (and other) beliefs accord with SDO. But it is not a mere matter of dominant group folks harboring varying degrees of SDO (and surely they provably, on average, harbor stronger SDO beliefs than subordinate group members). Subordinate group members too can have strong SDO beliefs. However, that does NOT mean they demonstrate a strong bias in favor of the strength of the subordinate group. No, it means they endorse and support the dominant group. This is somewhat supported by the Implicit Association Tests at Harvard that showed it is much more likely for blacks to have a pro-white bias AND to have an anti-black bias than it is for whites to have a pro-black bias AND and anti-white bias. Also, think of the famous Bobo doll experiments in which black children were more likely to select the white doll over the black doll (which actually shifted notably during the Black Power movement before reverting as the Black Power movement was destroyed due to the FBI in the 70s). It’s found that subordinate group members with LOWER SDO attitudes have a stronger in-group bias, this was even reflected in Palestinians. It’s rare for subordinate groups to have even close to the same level of hostility for dominant group members as dominant group members have for them (and there was NO evidence in any of the studies for “reverse racism.”)
The other way minorities participate in their oppression is through their internalization of negative stereotypes about their groups. They are conditioned in ways both subtle and explicit to “play the part.” One example is the point I mentioned about education earlier. And, of course, adopting socially dominant attitudes as a member of a subordinate group is by definition self-defeating, because it implies agreement with or endorsement of policies that are both unwarranted and harmful towards one’s group. However, such views are adopted because subordinate group members are led to believe that such traits are just natural to their culture (“acting black”), that it is dominant group members who know best how to run a society, and, moreover, that the social order is just (remember the just world doctrine as one of the correlates with SDO). So when we see drug abuse, crime, school dropout, and other examples of deviance in subordinate groups, Sidanus and Pratto say about half of this is due to the effects of systematic discrimination (ill-treatment in schools, being more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, executed, etc.) whereas half of it is subordinate group members dyssocially playing out the parts scripted for them due to internalized racism.
Sidanius makes it abundantly clear that the WRONG conclusion to draw here is that SDT establishes that attempting to improve or ameliorate racism in the US and other nations with democratic pretenses is futile. You often hear this type of convenient (for the dominant group) defeatism, “Oh, it’s not going anywhere, might as well accept it.” Well, not really. As Sidanius and Pratto highlight, we have hierarchy-attenuating myths and actions that have served to counteract and undermine racism and dominant group power. I will say Sidanus seems to overstate the effectiveness here, but I think despite the fact that “progress” is far overstated when you take a bird’s eye view of Western societies it is also foolish to write off hierarchy attenuation as wholly ineffectual.
I have a few questions and criticisms. For one, if the condition of hierarchization requires capital surplus, why is it that hominid societies are unequal but hunter gatherer societies are egalitarian? When positing the driving forces behind these structures and the potential biological basis (it’s also incredibly interesting that no matter how you cut it, males ALWAYS have stronger SDO orientations, again controlling for numerous variables and assessing various paradigms), he points to hominids like bonobos. Most of us know hominid societies are very hierarchical, like many mammalian species. Did they have a capital surplus? I think not. So how do we go from that to egalitarian hunter-gatherers? It’s a strange paradox of which I am unsure Sidanus provided an answer prior to his recent passing.
I also question some of their claims and positions on sexism. I largely agree with the subordinate male target hypothesis. However, he frames the discrimination faced by women as being largely paternalistic in nature. As in, dominant group males want to control women and take care of them, regardless of the subordinate groups they hail from but don’t harbor any real hostility toward them. Said differently, when we see harmful policies like in areas of reproductive rights, education, employment, etc. it is not the same type of hostility we see toward subordinate group males at play but a paternalism. I do not know if I agree here. I mean, if that’s the case how do you explain the widespread incidence of rape and sexualized violence against women? I think taking rape in warfare is an even more explicit example, as rape is extremely common in almost all armed conflicts no matter the combatants (e.g. in World War II, Germans and Russians BOTH raped heavily despite the stereotypes placed on Russians). I cannot conceive of any scenario in which that is anything other than nakedly hostile. This does not totally defeat his point, but it does expose it as somewhat tenuous.
Two other criticisms. On the “collaborationist” idea (subordinate group members internalize harmful, self-defeating beliefs and act on them), they cite alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and violence as examples of the pathology. However, numerous studies actually show rates of drug abuse are NOT higher for subordinate groups and that in various measures of violence rates are not vastly different. With alcohol, there are various studies that show people of higher socioeconomic status actually tend to consume MORE alcohol than those of lower status and by a not insignificant degree. Again, these facts do not totally defeat their point but these examples serve to undermine the force of their argument here.
Lastly, and neither Sidanus nor Prato make this argument, but I think they should have addressed this. So, if the arbitrary set invariably results in the creation of hierarchy, then who is to say that a racialized arbitrary set with black or other racialized males at the helm would be any better or different? This is another argument that you sometimes hear and, in fact, has been at the basis of much opposition to and undermining of black efforts at obtaining unencumbered political freedom, that black males will be worse and more dangerous than white men. Sure, it’s a propagandist charade with no legitimate support, but like the best propaganda it is very effective. However, I see no reason to believe all arbitrary sets are created equal or that the emergence of a different arbitrary set under whatever conditions would be meaningfully different or worse. You could argue it the other way, too, but there’s no basis. I don’t have answers, but I wish I would have seen them answer this (as opposed to just saying they are not advocating acceptance of socially dominant paradigms).
Very important work that effectively, compellingly organizes thinking around hierarchy and Western racism and how these types of structures and attitudes continue to be reproduced. There’s a competing theory called Social Identity Theory which also addresses group identity but seems less compelling since it does not adequately explain why members of subordinate groups so often advocate, support and identify with the dominant group. A related work that does, however, do this and which is worth checking out is Systems Justification Theory by John Jost.
April 11, 2009
A wonderful albeit technical review of an extremely important area of work. An important read for anyone interested in understanding social groups and/or society.
January 31, 2022
A challenging, not meant to comfort, but honest look at social structures of dominance.
It seems until we can integrate and think through how to manage this aspect of emergent structure in our societies, we will continue to ignore the voices and input from large segments. There is some evidence that elite abstraction and non-attendance to the larger social challenges eventually leads to collapse. With this in mind and with the climatological and ecological challenge before us, we need to learn the many facets of social dominance and how best to manage it, and with luck, grow past it. This lack of capacity to see and manage this emergent property of our social systems may well be the glass ceiling that prevents us from developing further, let us aim to address it so that we can meet the challenges that fate has in the offing together.
It seems until we can integrate and think through how to manage this aspect of emergent structure in our societies, we will continue to ignore the voices and input from large segments. There is some evidence that elite abstraction and non-attendance to the larger social challenges eventually leads to collapse. With this in mind and with the climatological and ecological challenge before us, we need to learn the many facets of social dominance and how best to manage it, and with luck, grow past it. This lack of capacity to see and manage this emergent property of our social systems may well be the glass ceiling that prevents us from developing further, let us aim to address it so that we can meet the challenges that fate has in the offing together.
July 22, 2021
This book is in fact a good book. It raises many important ideas I never knew. Hierarchy and discrimination is unavoidable in any society with production surplus. And the dominant and subordinate are mutually reinforcing.
Nevertheless, this book is just too political correct, namely feminism and BLM, although it's OK for them to have their opinion. Other than these, this is a good book, especially at the beginning and framework part.
Nevertheless, this book is just too political correct, namely feminism and BLM, although it's OK for them to have their opinion. Other than these, this is a good book, especially at the beginning and framework part.
August 8, 2015
for my purposes of understanding social inequalities, this book is glaringly incomplete given it tries to be a general theory. A historical analyses is missing, it pays lip service to Marx(ism) without actually engaging with class based analyses seriously, misses the mark on understanding gender based violence by paying too much attention to evolutionary theory.
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December 19, 2020i can't even
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews