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Book No. – 17 (Sociology)
Book Name – Sociology (Yogesh Atal)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. RACE
2. TRIBE
3. CASTE: VARNA AND JATI
4. THE MANY USES OF THE TERM CASTE IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT
4.1. THE DOMINANT CASTE
5. CLASS
5.1. EVALUATED PARTICIPATION OR EP
5.2. INDEX OF STATUS CHARACTERISTICS (ISC)
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LANGUAGE
Race, Tribe, Caste and Class
Yogesh Atal
Chapter – 15
Table of Contents
- Societies are stratified in several ways, with three ascriptive groups (Race, Tribe, and Caste) and a category based on achievement (Class) used as prominent strata.
- In the 1980s, Neil J. Smelser noted that the terms race, ethnicity, and class are widely used in both social sciences and everyday discourse.
- Smelser pointed out that each of these terms is used as if it has a common meaning, but none is used with precision in either context.
- The same observation applies to the word caste.
- There is a need for conceptual clarification of the terms race, ethnicity, class, and caste.
RACE
- All humans belong to a single genus, Homo Sapiens, indicating biological commonalities distinguishing them from other animals.
- Despite being part of the same species, individuals differ physically, and these differences tend to cluster in specific populations, giving rise to race.
- Racial classification divides humanity into three main groups: Caucasoid (White), Mongoloid (Yellow), and Negroid(Black), with further sub-races based on physical traits such as hair color, eye color, skin color, body height, and facial features.
- Physical anthropology developed measures for these traits to classify people racially.
- Race has historically been used as an ideological tool to promote the superiority of whites over others, leading to the development of Eugenics.
- Ashley-Montagu criticized the concept of racial superiority, calling it “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth” and exposing its fallacy.
- UNESCO actively discredited the theory of racial superiority with pamphlets.
- A commonly agreed definition of race: a major grouping of interrelated people possessing a distinctive combination of physical traits due to their genetic composition.
- Four factors influencing racial differences: gene mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and population mixture.
- Racial miscegenation (mixing of races) has made it impossible to find pure races, especially the original three (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid).
- People of the same race may speak different languages, practice different religions, and live in diverse cultures.
- The idea of race being linked to stratification points to multi-racial societies, where large populations may dominate a region or continent.
- Hoebel summarized race and cultural capacity:
- Acknowledges potential innate physiological and psychological differences between racial groups.
- No such differences have been scientifically isolated.
- Race differences have a minimal effect on behavior compared to the influence of culture.
- Culture is the main determinant of human society.
- Race became a tool for social discrimination during colonial times, promoting the subjugation of Africans by whites.
- The novel Roots by Alex Haley depicts the story of an African slave brought to the U.S.
- Slaves were at the bottom of the social ladder in the U.S. and were denied basic rights.
- Apartheid in South Africa continued until the 1990s; Nelson Mandela fought for black rights and became the first President of a post-Apartheid South Africa.
- Racial miscegenation and migration have made it difficult to classify people strictly by race.
- Many nations are multi-racial, with people of various races coexisting in single nation-states.
- Stratification in multi-racial societies led to the hierarchical placement of racial groups, and endogamy often made races function like castes.
- The Portuguese term “casta” (meaning race or lineage) influenced the Indian caste system.
- Gunnar Myrdal used the term caste to describe the black-white relationship in the southern U.S., emphasizing its differences from the class system.
- Smelser suggested that race as a sociological phenomenon is culturally and socially constructed.
- Racism arises when beliefs of racial superiority lead to domination over other races.
- In multiracial societies, race and class merge, with racial groups assigned to different types of labor (e.g., slavery, indentured labor, agriculture).
- Oommen introduced the concept of racity, referring to racial solidarity and efforts to cope with racism.
- Aggregative racism refers to the tendency to categorize various ethnic groups into a single racial category, like “Black”.
- The terms ethnic group and ethnicity have become popular in recent years, particularly in the Indian context, where it may be used synonymously with tribe or caste.
- Blumer defined an ethnic group as a collectivity with shared ancestry, memories of a past, and cultural symbols that define its identity.
- The distinction between race and ethnic group can be problematic due to overlap, as ethnic groups often have physical traits linked to race.
- Ethnic groups that tend to be endogamous and localized are more likely to resemble each other.
- The term ethnic is also used to describe traditional or exotic aspects of culture, often applied to tribes or peasant societies.