# Authority, Decisions, and Power: Political Anthropology

## Modern Nation-States

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Distinguish nation from state and describe how the two are linked in modern nation-states.
2. Define the concept of imagined communities.
3. Identify the importance of colonialism in shaping postcolonial nation-states.
4. Describe the field of postcolonial studies.
5. Explain the fragility of postcolonial states.
6. Provide two examples of the consequences of globalization for national identities and politics.
Before 1400 or so, the world was a variegated array of empires, kingdoms, and chiefdoms with their tributary societies, loosely linked by trade with acephalous societies at the peripheries. The contemporary globe is an economically integrated order fundamentally organized into nation-states. How did this happen?
The nation-state is a hyphenated concept joining two entities, the state and the nation. As discussed earlier, the state is an institution exercising centralized rule over a territory. States have bureaucracies that make, interpret, and enforce law. States collect taxes and use them to build infrastructure and public works. States organize and regulate the economy. States maintain monopoly on the use of force through the military and the police. Because states tend to be militant and expansionist, they also tend to form multiethnic empires, dominated by one ruling group. Ancient empires did not attempt to absorb their tributary societies into one common ethnicity or peoplehood. Ancient states were defined by territory and bureaucracy alone, with no effort to achieve cultural uniformity.
The nation is a much more idealistic and cultural notion. A nation is a sense of cultural belonging or “peoplehood.” A cousin of the word native, the term nation refers to the original inhabitants of a territory, those who were born there. Nations often claim a common language as a sign of group membership. Nations tell a common origin story about where they came from, and they ritually commemorate that story in a ritual calendar of feasts and holidays. Nations claim a common destiny, a special future or sacred duty assigned to them by God. And finally, nations promote certain social norms and values, evaluating individuals and groups according to those ideals. The concept of nation is close to the old-fashioned notion of culture as communal and unchanging. A nation-state is a state with a common culture, in some cases a dominant ethnicity.
Political scientist Benedict Anderson (1983) argues that all modern states deliberately cultivate this sense of peoplehood for those living in the state. They draw from a large repertoire of methods to summon the loyalty of their citizens and reinforce the legitimacy of the state system. Through practices both within and beyond the government, state societies encourage their citizens to imagine themselves as part of a larger community of like-minded people in a harmonious society bound by a common history and common destiny. Government promotes national identity through practices such as elections, censuses, taxes, schools, and the dramas of law making, interpretation, and enforcement. Modern states rely on meaningful public rituals and symbols, such as flags, anthems, pledges of allegiance, national holidays, historical monuments, and national museums. Outside of government, the mass news media highlights the importance of the daily actions of the state, providing continual coverage that fixes the attention of citizens on the state as the central power in society.
As a citizen of a nation-state, you will never know all of the members of your national community. Such communities are far too large to generate organic social groups based on face-to-face interaction. Without all of the practices and rituals listed above, you might not even consider yourself a member of the larger political community at all. Because of this, Benedict Anderson refers to nations as imagined communities. By imagined, Anderson is not arguing that such communities are simply imaginary or not real, but rather that national identity is a powerful sense of unity that is strategically constructed by the state and mass media.
The nation-states of western Europe grew out of an assemblage of kingdoms and territories, some of them once incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire. From the 15th to the 19th century, the states of Europe slowly emerged, one by one, as the various European powers entered into peace agreements that established international borders and sovereignty over territories. In general, the wars and treaties of political elites meant very little to the common farmers and traders living in these territories. Among English commoners, for instance, their sense of community was not much affected by the continually changing map of territories that constituted the state of England. What did make a difference for European commoners was the development of the printing press around 1440.
The printing press targeted a growing population of literate commoners. Driven by the capitalist profit motive, printers sought to reach the widest possible audience. Thus, they printed their books, pamphlets, and newspapers in local languages rather than in Latin, which was the pan-European language of elites and the Catholic Church. For each emerging nation-state, mass media helped standardize a diversity of dialects into one common language that could be used to spread common messages and carry out common practices such as schooling, law, political campaigns, and government bureaucracy.
Of course, the printing press did not singlehandedly create the modern nation-states of Europe. Around the same time that the press began churning out mass discourse, a rising class of capitalist merchants was gaining economic power, hoping to displace forms of political leadership associated with the church and the feudal monarchies. The felicitous coincidence of class motivation and printing technology combined to propel the development of European nation-states.
For Max Weber, the nation-state is associated with the complete formalization of rational-bureaucratic power—that is, power concentrated in bureaucratic institutions with legal authorities. The legal and political systems of nation-state bureaucracies often purport to be based on rules and procedures rather than social status or identities. For instance, in the American system, the ability to vote is based on legal citizenship, not social class, gender, or ethnic identity. However, legal and political bureaucracies reserve the power to determine who is and who is not a citizen as well as procedures for voter registration and voting in elections. Through these procedures, certain categories of people can be barred or discouraged from voting, resulting in racial or ethnic bias. If people of color are less likely to have state-sponsored photo identification (such as a driver’s license), then laws requiring such ID to vote may constitute forms of racial discrimination.
French philosopher Michel Foucault (1978, 2007) describes such power to define and control populations of citizens as biopower. A special form of power exercised in modern states, biopower includes ways of regulating the bodies of citizens, such as practices associated with birth, death, sexuality, wellness, illness, work, and leisure. The ability to count and categorize the inhabitants of a state is a form of biopower. The ability to confine people who have certain illnesses or bodily conditions or have engaged in certain behaviors is a form of biopower. When you walk through a body scanner in an airport security station, you are experiencing a form of biopower. While Weber focused on specific institutions in which power is concentrated, Foucault describes biopower as a diffuse form of social control, widely practiced by citizens both within and outside state bureaucracies. In American society, people routinely carry state-sponsored identification on their bodies (in a pocket or purse) wherever they go. The information on this identity card links to bureaucratic files associated with a person’s citizenship status, criminal history, voter registration, and many other data sets. Bureaucratic power is thereby melded to bodies of modern citizens.

### Colonial and Postcolonial States

Outside of Europe, a similar array of kingdoms, chiefdoms, lineage orders, and village democracies patterned much of the rest of the world. Recall that ancient state societies had emerged at various times in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, and Central and South America. Kingdoms were prevalent forms of centralized rule on most continents as well. All around these highly centralized societies were smaller chiefdoms and acephalous communities.
The continent of Africa, for instance, featured large, centralized states and kingdoms such as Egypt in the north; Aksum, Zimbabwe, and Swahili in the east; Luba and Kongo in central Africa; and a multitude of kingdoms across West Africa, including the great trade-based empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Monroe 2013). As noted in the discussion of acephalous societies, communities outside of these great kingdoms and states were politically organized, with forms of leadership, decision-making, and dispute settlement that maintained social order.
British historian Basil Davidson (1992) has argued that African societies such as the Asante and Zulu were proto-states, or states in formation, at the time of European colonization. Between 1400 and 1900—the time frame during which European nation-states were emerging—many African societies were undergoing similar developments as militant kingdoms consolidated large territories of empire. Based on intensive agriculture and extensive trade networks across the continent (and beyond), such highly centralized societies had state bureaucracies, multiethnic populations, systems of law, and monumental architecture. They also had dominant ideologies that emphasized the accumulation and appropriate distribution of wealth. In other words, many African societies were state societies well on their way to becoming modern nation-states.
Instead, colonialism happened. As we learned in Work, Life, Value: Economic Anthropology, the growth of industrial capitalism prompted the major European powers to seek access to raw materials and markets for their finished goods. Many set their sights on the mineral wealth and agricultural potential of Africa. European representatives met in Berlin in 1884–1885 to negotiate their territorial interests on the African continent. Laying out a map of the continent, they drew boundaries around the areas they hoped to control, though they knew very little about the land or peoples in much of those areas. They agreed that they could maintain exclusive claim on those areas only if they established government administrations to rule over the people who lived there.
By the early 20th century, Europeans had established colonial government over nearly all societies in Africa, subordinating local African political systems under European rule. As the whole point of colonialism was to secure resources to fuel European colonies, the colonial states established by Europeans were authoritarian, militaristic, and extractive. They invaded African territories and slaughtered Africans who would not submit to European rule. They forced Africans to work on colonial projects such as mines and roads. They made Africans pay taxes to fund the colonial enterprise. And they designed and controlled African economies to channel profits to European merchants and manufacturers. Oddly, as European nation-states pulled away from direct control over their own economies, European colonial states exerted complete control over colonial economies. Moreover, as European nation-states became increasingly participatory and democratic, European colonial states were managed in ways that were repressive, authoritarian, and openly violent.
Because of colonial rule, the two forces that contributed to the rise of the modern nation-state in Europe—a wealthy capitalist class and the printing press—were prevented from playing the same role in African societies. Africans were deliberately sidelined from the import-export trade and were not allowed to start factories, preventing a class of wealthy capitalists from developing under colonial rule. Instead, colonial rule established a two-tiered system of governance in the colonies consisting of a militant authoritarian state apparatus governing over local African political systems, including proto-states, chiefdoms, lineage orders, and a few scattered band societies. In places where there were chiefs, colonial officials used those chiefs to carry out colonial policies, often against the wishes and interests of the chiefs’ own people. In places where there were no chiefs, colonial authorities often forced Africans to pick one to perform those duties. In some colonies, African political institutions were banned altogether.
Anthropologists working on political issues in previously colonized states (such as most African ones) often combine historical and contemporary research to understand the intersection of local and foreign influences that make up this complex picture. In one form or another, colonial processes shaped the development of political systems in Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the Americas, and eastern Europe. The interdisciplinary field of postcolonial studies emerged in the 1970s, combining history, anthropology, political science, and area studies in an effort to understand the diversity, complexity, and legacy of colonialism throughout the world.

### “Fragile” States and “Failed” States: The Legacies of Colonialism

The study of African politics provides an excellent example of the weaving of local culture and colonial history in the making of contemporary postcolonial societies. Journalists and political scientists frequently lament the political instability of African states and their susceptibility to popular unrest, ethnic conflicts, coups, and corrupt leadership. Some refer to African states as fragile states or failed states. A fragile state is a government that cannot adequately perform the essential functions of a state, such as maintaining law and order, building basic infrastructure such as roads and bridges, guaranteeing basic amenities such as electricity and clean water, and defending its citizens against violence. Such a state is fragile because it is susceptible to popular uprising, coups, civil war, and foreign invasion. A failed state is a state that can no longer perform any state functions at all.
Many anthropologists are critical of this simplistic and ahistorical way of stigmatizing non-Western governments. Rather than viewing the world as a set of discrete states in isolation, anthropologists pay attention to historical processes of interaction among states that have shaped global patterns of inequality. Examining the notions of state fragility and state failure through a critical lens, anthropologist note how some states have become more powerful while others have struggled to meet the needs of their peoples.
At various times over the past 30 years, many African states have qualified as fragile or failed, including Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2005, the Fragile States Index has ranked all states in the United Nations according to a set of key political, economic, and social indicators. Among the top 50 “most fragile” states in the 2020 index, all but two have experienced some form of colonial rule, and 35 of the top 50 most fragile states are African states. For more information on fragile states see Fragile States Index.
Why do so many African states face such deep-seated problems? How did colonialism contribute to the current fragility of postcolonial states?
As an example, take the postcolonial West African state of Ghana. What can an anthropological approach tell us about contemporary politics in Ghana? Most African countries won independence in the middle of the 20th century. Once free from colonial domination, new classes of African political elites won control over the colonial apparatus of the state, including its colonial institutions and boundaries and its bureaucratic rule over African chiefdoms and acephalous societies. In other words, at independence, the structure of the state as it had existed under colonialism remained essentially unchanged. The new leaders of these African states faced the near-impossible challenge of politically and economically restructuring their states while holding together the diverse groups existing within colonial boundaries, groups frequently pitted against one another under colonial rule. As an additional stress, finances were limited and unpredictable.
Leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister and, later, the first president of Ghana, sought to reform the state to make it serve the interests of Africans. He started schools and hospitals and built roads, bridges, and dams in an effort to do all the things a state should do to command the loyalty of its citizens. He used symbols of chiefdom to promote his own political power, even though he was not a chief or even from a royal lineage. His administration reduced the regional power of chiefs in an effort to enhance the centralized power of the state. Nkrumah was wildly popular at first, but over time, economic and regional factors challenged his rule. Some cocoa farmers felt they were being exploited to fund grand projects benefiting urban elites. Facing widespread criticism, Nkrumah became increasingly autocratic, throwing political opponents in prison.
In 1966, nine years after declaring Ghanaian independence from the British, Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by a military coup that accused him of corruption and political repression. Over the next 15 years, Ghana endured four more military coups and two (brief) elected governments, an exceptionally long string of political instability. Each military coup justified its takeover by claiming the previous regime had been massively corrupt—and each one eventually became the target of the same accusations of corruption.
Political instability, popular unrest, military coups, corruption—a similar narrative describes the political development of many other African states. The commonality of political crisis in Africa has prompted many journalists and policy experts to wonder what is wrong with African states. What is the underlying problem? Postcolonial studies suggest that we must think both culturally and historically to understand how postcolonial societies function. Postcolonial states are very often fragile states not because they are doing something wrong but largely because of the legacies of colonialism.
In many African societies, colonialism tainted precolonial political systems while also constructing a repressive, authoritarian state. Recall our earlier discussion of checks and balances in the system of chieftaincy practiced by the Akans. Akan chiefs were expected to act in the interests of their people or else face the consequences. If a community became unhappy with their chief, the asafo could eventually depose the chief by force. Though asafo had many civic duties, the term itself literally means “war people,” referring to their role in defense and in deposing bad chiefs.
British colonial rule put Akan chiefs in a contradictory position. Forced to act as agents of colonial rule, chiefs were ordered to collect colonial taxes, supply teams of forced labor, and enforce unpopular colonial laws. At the same time, chiefs were presented with new economic opportunities in the colonial system—such as selling off land and pocketing the money—that further undermined their commitment to the welfare of their own people. As their positions became increasingly conflicted, some chiefs succumbed to the temptations of embezzlement, extortion, and authoritarianism.
Fed up with these corrupt chiefs, many asafo groups took action. In the 1920s, a spate of asafo uprisings deposed unpopular chiefs throughout the southern part of the colony. Fearing the consequences of African popular protest, British colonial officials quickly suppressed the asafo uprisings and forbid the asafo from any further action against their chiefs. So, to be clear, British colonialism corrupted the institution of African chieftaincy and then forbade the exercise of African protest against that corruption.
Now jump ahead to that long period of political instability in Ghana in the latter half of the 20th century. Ghanaian anthropologist Maxwell Owusu (1989) argues that this colonial history of corruption and protest has shaped postcolonial politics in Ghana. Just as the pressures of colonialism undermined and tainted the Akan chieftaincy, the near-impossible mission of the postcolonial state undermined and tainted the Ghanaian presidency. Just as asafo groups were motivated by allegations of corruption to rise up and depose their chiefs, the Ghanaian military rose up time and time again to depose Ghanaian leaders accused of corruption.

### Nation-States and Globalization

In the latter part of the 20th century, increasing global flows of trade, people, technologies, communication, and ideas all coalesced in a strong but uneven wave of globalization rippling across the globe. To be clear, the world has always been integrated by such flows, but advanced technologies combined with the profit drive of corporate capitalism forced a sudden acceleration of these processes roughly from the late 1970s into the 2000s.
As people, objects, and messages began to travel across national boundaries with increasing frequency and speed, many scholars argued that nation-states would lose their relevance as structures of economic and political order for their populations. Some scholars thought that globalization would result in the erasure of cultural and national differences, replacing global diversity with a uniform culture based on American corporate capitalism and consumerism. Would globalization result in the “McDonaldization” of the world?
As global researchers with a powerful toolkit of cross-cultural methods, anthropologists were uniquely poised to address this question. In short, the answer was an emphatic “No!” Rather than diminishing the importance of local structures and identities, globalization has transformed and enhanced them. Consider the increasing popularity of global travel. Why would anyone go anywhere if things were the same wherever you went? Many nation-states invest heavily in their distinctive cultures, monuments, and environmental features in order to attract global travelers keen to experience something new and different.
Consider another strong force of globalization, the increasing tendency for large corporate manufacturers based in the United States to relocate their factories to poorer countries where labor is cheaper and environmental regulation may be weaker. Initially, this technique undermined the power of nation-states and local communities to challenge corporate practices. Over time, however, the resulting loss of well-paid working-class jobs in the United States has generated a great deal of political controversy. This loss of working-class jobs has resulted in rising levels of inequality in American society. Some politicians call for the American government to create incentives and regulations to keep American jobs within American borders. Ironically, then, globalization may provoke citizens to enhance the power of their nation-states.
In poorer countries, globalization has resulted in increased environmental damage as globalized industries take advantage of looser regulations. Industrial pollution and the dumping of hazardous waste by global corporations pose serious threats to the health of local communities in many non-Western countries. Responding to these threats, local peoples turn to their governments to enact environmental protections. Moreover, the forces of globalization have created a strong network of transnational resistance to environmentally destructive practices with organizations such as the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
In the wake of Benedict Anderson’s (1983) formulation of nation-states as imagined communities, many anthropologists have considered how globalization creates transnational forms of imagined community alongside the nation. Cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996) argues that globalization freed popular imagination from the constraints of the nation, creating multiple realms of imagined community cross-cutting national borders. Appadurai postulates five dimensions of global flows, constructing realms of activity and imagination: ethnicity, technology, finance, media, and ideology. The global environmental movement, for instance, constitutes a transnational imagined community based on ideas of environmental sustainability. Through media and communication technologies, people all over the world join in the discussions and activities of this imagined community.
Appadurai has also pointed to the darker consequences of globalization for national and transnational politics. While globalization might seem to be associated with free flows and flexibility, the forces of transnationalism have also resulted in a proliferation of forms of political violence, especially violence against ethnic, racial, and religious minority groups (2006). With increasing global flows, many communities are subject to increased cultural mixing and pressures for change. With rising immigration, for instance, national communities may be forced to reformulate notions of common language, practices, and values. While some citizens of a national community may embrace a more cosmopolitan and multicultural identity, others may experience a sense of insecurity and threat to their way of life. This insecurity is particularly keen among those working-class and poor groups that suffer from the increased inequality brought about by globalization. Appadurai describes how cultural and economic insecurity can provoke majority ethnic and racial groups to acts of violence against minority groups in their national communities. Seeking an elusive and imaginary national “purity,” dominant groups seek to reassert their power over political, economic, and cultural institutions. Anti-immigrant politics in the United States and anti-American politics in some non-Western countries are both dangerous and sometimes violent responses to the common forces of globalization.


# Authority, Decisions, and Power: Political Anthropology

## Resistance, Revolution, and Social Movements

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Define the concept of social movement.
2. Distinguish between political parties and social movements.
3. Identify the goals of the Arab Spring.
4. Describe how democratic institutions may fail to represent majority and minority groups.
5. Give an example of how anthropologists study social movements.
6. Explain how Indigenous groups have formed social movements to protect Native lands and cultures.
Politics includes all activities associated with governing a society. Thus far, we’ve focused on the institutions and practices of government. But politics happens both inside and outside the realm of government. In fact, what happens outside of government may be even more important to understanding how a society is ruled. Outside of government, people respond to social and political conditions with commentary, critique, and social action. They form groups to express their views and demand social change. These groups are called social movements.
In the early 2010s, a series of protests spread across the Arab world from Tunisia to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and many other countries (Blakemore 2019). Through marches, demonstrations, and armed rebellions, people called for an end to oppressive governments and poor living conditions in their countries. Fueled by the expansion of social media, this large and diverse pro-democracy social movement came to be called the Arab Spring. At the heart of the movement were demands for more participation in government (a political demand) and a more equitable distribution of wealth (an economic demand).
There are many different kinds of social movements. Some social movements express resistance to current social conditions. When groups gather to protest the outcome of an election or the passing of a law, they show their disagreement with government actions without necessarily suggesting specific action or redress. Other social movements campaign for specific reforms. In response to police shootings, for instance, protesters might call for changes in the training and routine practices of police in their communities. More ambitious still are social movements calling for revolution. A revolution occurs when a social movement successfully changes the structure of the political system—whether through peaceful actions or violence.
Many social movements are rooted in political economy; that is, they work to change political and economic conditions and the relationship between those two realms. In democratic societies, political parties are social movements that have transformed into formalized political institutions. Political parties play a routine, conventional role in democratic societies. For instance, in American society, the Democratic Party consistently argues that the government should play a role in organizing and regulating the economy, while the Republican Party consistently argues that government should avoid economic interference. Political parties are fully integrated into the political system of democratic societies, structuring elections, lawmaking, government policy, and even the judicial process.
Political parties may fail to represent the views of some groups—or even majority opinion. In the U.S. Congress, the views of a very wealthy minority of Americans exert a strong influence over the laws that are passed. Political scientist Martin Gilens (2012) conducted public opinion research among groups of poor, middle-class, and wealthy Americans and then compared the views of these three groups to the policy actions of government. Gilens found that when poor people and rich people disagree on an issue, government policy nearly always supports the views of the wealthy. This effect is largely due to the role of money in American politics, with the wealthy actively seeking to influence government policy through lobbying and campaign contributions.
So what can people do when the formal mechanisms of democracy fail to represent their views? The vast majority of social movements are less like political parties and more like the Arab Spring; that is, most social movements are informal groups engaging in activities outside of the formal realm of political activity. Social movements often originate in a particular incident or string of incidents, such as mass shootings, sexual assaults, police violence, or environmental disasters. When people feel that the truth of such incidents is hidden, obscured, or misrepresented by government officials and media, they may find dramatic ways to publicize the truth and demand remediating action. French philosopher Michel Foucault (2001) used the term parrhesia to describe how people are morally inspired to engage in risky public speech in order to speak truth to power.
In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, many Americans became worried about the role of the financial sector in creating economic inequality and instability. In September 2011, a group of protesters met in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan to protest rising inequality and corporate influence over American politics. Over time, this movement, known as Occupy Wall Street, spread to cities throughout the United States and then the world, and members of the movement articulated a platform of sociopolitical goals that included a more balanced distribution of wealth, better jobs and working conditions, regulation of banks, bankruptcy protection for student loan debt, and a freeze on home foreclosures. Protesters set up a participatory community in the park, organizing a form of self-governance through working groups and democratic consensus. Some protesters camped on-site in tents, while others visited the park each day. In November 2011, police in riot gear forcibly removed protesters from Zuccotti Park, arresting some 200 people in a single day.
In many countries, extractive industries such as mining and logging produce forms of environmental damage that threaten the health and livelihoods of local peoples. When governments fail to intervene, farmers often join with urban activists to form coalitions aimed at environmental reform. Anthropologist Fabiana Li (2015) has explored the emergence of protest against multinational mining corporations in Peru. In 2004, 10,000 peasants gathered to protest a mining operation that would have leveled the mountain of Cerro Quilish. While company officials viewed the mountain as an obstacle to the extraction of minerals, urban activists and peasant leaders described it in sentient and supernatural terms, as a sacred place of spirits. Li also studies the response of mining officials to popular demands for accountability. When local people protest against the degradation and pollution of their lands, corporations often respond with technical fixes that are presented as fair solutions. For instance, when blood tests revealed high levels of lead in children living near a Peruvian mining operation, the mining company responded with a program to bus those children to a distant kindergarten, thus reducing the number of hours of daily exposure to mining pollution.
Many Indigenous peoples encompassed by contemporary nation-states engage in social movements to gain formal political recognition and to protect their lands and cultures. Work, Life, Value: Economic Anthropology discussed efforts by the Hadza, the Bedouin, and the Kayapo to protect their lifeways by forming coalitions with global allies and engaging in sustained public protest. As discussed in Chapter 6, Language and Communication, Indigenous groups such as the Wampanoag and the Maori have formed social movements around the revitalization of language and culture. In 2016, a group of Standing Rock Sioux and other Native Americans began campaigning to protect Native lands and cultures from the damaging effects of a proposed oil pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Running under waterways and across Native territories, the pipeline threatened the water supply of Native peoples as well as many sites, archaeological and otherwise, considered sacred by Native groups. Thousands of Native Americans and environmentalists gathered in multiple camps to protest the building of the pipeline over several months. Despite the protests, the Trump administration allowed the construction of the pipeline to begin in 2017. In January 2021, however, a US Appeals court vacated the Army Corps of Engineers’ construction permit and called for extensive environmental review of the project.
As the examples above illustrate, most social movements combine protests against specific conditions with more general agendas involving justice, equality, democracy, and political economy. When the power of money overwhelms the formal political institutions of a democratic society, social movements provide an alternative means of political expression and potential influence.

### Summary

All societies have ways of exercising authority, making decisions, and settling disputes. In the 1940s, anthropologists distinguished between those societies with informal means of accomplishing these functions and those with formal roles and systems for doing so. In acephalous societies such as bands and lineage orders, leadership is situational and temporary, and people make decisions using discussion and consensus. Leaders in such societies have persuasive power but no formal means of enforcing their will. In centralized societies such as chiefdoms and states, various forms of power are condensed in the formal hereditary role of the leader. As military leaders, chiefs and kings have coercive power to collect taxes and tribute, enforce their commands, settle conflicts, and wage war to enlarge their territories. As societies become more centralized, they also become more stratified, with social groups ranked according to wealth and power. With social stratification and centralized rule, systems of ideology and hegemony develop to support the social order. Modern nation-states combine the state apparatus with a strategically cultivated sense of peoplehood based on common culture. European colonialism imposed an authoritarian state form to rule over local forms of political organization such as chiefdoms and lineage orders, often malforming those original political forms. The structural and social problems of many postcolonial states are rooted in the destructive processes of colonialism. Outside of the formal realm of government, people seek to influence social and political conditions through social movements. Some social movements provide a means of expressing dissatisfaction, while others press for specific forms of social change or complete reorganization of the political order.

### Critical Thinking Questions

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# Social Inequalities

## Introduction

As a student, have you ever experienced social inequalities, whether based around your race, gender, sexuality, class, or abilities? In this chapter you’ll see definitions and examples of the ways social inequalities affect individuals and societies. Over the history of anthropology, the ways we identify and define social inequalities has constantly evolved. The ways social inequalities are experienced has also evolved. This chapter will provide an overview of the important concepts and levels of social inequalities, and then an examination of the experiences of individuals within groups and societies. From this, you can develop a framework for understanding the inequality in your own communities.


# Social Inequalities

## Theories of Inequity and Inequality

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Differentiate between systematic and systemic inequities.
2. Discuss theories of social inequality and anthropology’s past of upholding social inequalities.
3. Describe the connections between power, agency, and resistance.

### Social Stratification

Division of labor, in and of itself, is not hierarchical, but when different values are assigned to different types of labor and some positions or people have power over others, this creates a hierarchy. A hierarchy is a type of social organization in which certain people or roles are given more power and prestige than others. As discussed in Economic Anthropology, there are various possible divisions of labor depending on a group’s mode of production. Many gatherer-hunter groups experience a social structure described as egalitarian, in which the diverse roles in a system of production are all given the same decision-making power and accorded the same respect among the group. In such societies, power is usually afforded by age grades, with the elders holding the most power.
Conversely, when there are differences in status or power between various roles, social stratification results. Social stratification is the hierarchical organization of different groups of people, whether based on racial category, socioeconomic status, kinship, religion, birth order, or gender. In horticultural societies, this stratification can be linked to charismatic leaders or leaders whose power is culturally imbued at birth. State societies, and specifically market economies, are considered the most stratified, meaning they have the highest resource inequities. Whether in the Inca Empire of the 1300s or the contemporary United States, a complex system of social hierarchy and social inequality accompanies state-level societies.

### Levels of Inequality

Although it is important to understand the ways in which societies control resource accumulation, it is also important to study the phenomena and experiences of inequality in one’s own culture. This section will examine how individuals experience different levels of social inequalities. In contemporary societies, experiences of social inequalities often have roots in systems of capitalism, colonialism, racism, and sexism, which all include a perceived superiority of one group over another.
Interpersonal inequalities, which are power imbalances that are rooted in personal biases, occur every day, reifying and naturalizing inequalities that exist at institutional and systemic levels. Institutional inequalities stem from the policies and practices of organizations (educational institutions, government, companies) that perpetuate oppression. Institutional inequalities exist outside of the day-to-day interactions that people experience, are often unseen, and feel like the status quo. Structural inequalities exist at a level above personal interactions and institutions because they are based on the accumulated effects of institutional decisions across society and history. This type of inequality is pervasive, global, and especially difficult to disrupt. Structural inequalities can reaffirm individual biases, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Finally, systemic inequalities are the confluence of interpersonal, institutional, and structural inequalities; these are often portrayed by “isms” such as racism, classism, and sexism.
Inequality refers to the unequal distribution of resources. Most people learn about inequality at a young age when they are exposed to people from different socioeconomic classes in places such as schools, places of worship, or social organizations. They recognize that some people have more resources at their disposal, whether through inborn talents or social connections. Such people may wear more expensive clothing, drive more expensive cars, and even have more opportunities than others. Social inequalities are based on individual people’s backgrounds and how their opportunities in life have been affected by racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression. In this context, oppression is defined as unjust exercises of power that may be overt or covert and are often used to control or inflict harm on entire groups of people. Inequity, on the other hand, refers to the unequal distribution of resources due to an unjust power imbalance. It is a type of inequality caused by this unequal distribution, often as a result of injustices against historically excluded groups of people. In the United States, inequity is seen today in areas such as the banking industry, access to voting, and the housing market, where minority groups continue to face challenges related to fairness and equitable distribution of resources. Social inequalities lead to inequity when the groups in charge of distribution allocate resources in ways that further oppress marginalized groups.
You may have seen images on social media trying to explain the difference between inequality and inequity—or, on the flip side, equality and equity. One problem with such images, as Sarah Willen, Colleen Walsh, and Abigail Fisher Williamson (2021) point out, is that because they depict individuals, audiences may interpret these images as calling for localized or individual solutions rather than systemic changes. Oppression and inequity most often are not interpersonal but exist on a structural level of economics, politics, and socialization that normalizes their presence.
In order to understand the differences between inequality and inequity, systematic oppression and systemic oppression, it is important to know that the word  has two different definitions. A system can refer to a formula for methodically attaining a goal, such as a system someone creates to study vocabulary before a foreign language exam. The term systematic oppression derives from this meaning; it is the intentional mistreatment of certain groups. On the other hand, the term  can also mean a combination of parts to form a complex whole, such as the organs in an organism. This definition is the root of the term systemic oppression, which describes how political, economic, and social inequalities are normalized and perpetuated. Many scholars have determined that systemic oppression is permanently ingrained in US laws, government, and society, with the result that it is both unseen and subconsciously upheld daily.
When discussing inequality and inequity, it is also important to understand power, which, in its simplest sense, is the ability to exert control, authority, or influence over others. Individuals with more power have more agency, or capability to act and make decisions. Agency should not be confused with free will because an individual’s agency is often heavily shaped by social characteristics such as race, gender, and class. Along with social inequalities, this chapter will discuss power, agency, and how the two are conceptualized by anthropologists through various perspectives and theoretical frameworks.

### Classic Theories of Social Inequality

The remainder of this chapter will examine social inequalities in detail. It will cover racism, classism, and sexism along with some common paradigms and theoretical frameworks that explain systems of inequality and power.
According to philosopher Thomas Kuhn, paradigms are worldviews that often define a scientific discipline during a specific time period. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn argues that paradigms can shift when a dominant paradigm cannot explain newly discovered phenomena under which normal science operates. Each of the theories that follow was based on a paradigm shift in the social sciences of its time period. The frameworks that anthropologists use to understand power imbalances have been built on the critiques of many of the initial anthropological explanations for power imbalances and social inequalities.

### Social Darwinism and Unilinear Cultural Evolution

Social Darwinism played an important role in the colonialist attitudes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, discussed in detail in Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence, speaks of how traits beneficial to the procreation of a species are passed down, creating changes over time that lead to the evolution of species on Earth. In his Principles of Biology (1864–1867), social scientist Herbert Spencer applies the principles of evolution to human societies, combining his concept of the “survival of the fittest” with French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s views that acquired characteristics can be passed down. Spencer argues that characteristics such as a tendency to work hard and achieve success are passed down from generation to generation, as are traits such as weaknesses and laziness, thus attributing ongoing social inequalities to biological differences.
Social Darwinists of the 19th and 20th centuries utilized Spencer’s survival theory (under Darwin’s name) to argue that competition for resources meant that “weak” human individuals should die out so that “stronger” traits could be passed down to the next generation. Social Darwinists claimed that any group that conquered another was better fit to survive and that those who were conquered would benefit from the civilizing influence of more powerful nations.
Although popular among certain social scientists, social Darwinism was not a term often used in anthropology. Anthropologists instead turned to the theory of unilinear cultural evolution (UCE), made famous by anthropologists E. B. Tylor and Lewis H. Morgan in the 19th century. UCE, which was based on comparing and contrasting different cultures, theorized that societies progressed in a linear fashion, from the lowest level of savagery through barbarism to civilization. Social Darwinism and UCE upheld social inequalities because these theories argued that the defining features of civilization were social hierarchy and inequality. They were the basis for White Europeans’ claims that their culture held more power, had more value, and allowed them to exert military power over lands that were not their own.

### Functionalism

Functionalism is a theory attributed to French sociologist Emile Durkheim in the early 20th century. In anthropology, the best-known of the functionalists are Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe Brown, who examined the purpose that certain cultural characteristics serve in the order of society. For functionalists, egalitarian societies have certain rituals or beliefs that maintain equality, while in stratified societies, the hierarchy of roles maintains order when conflict arises. The function of social stratification, then, is to give power to those who are most equipped to lead, or to motivate those with talents to achieve positions of power and create wealth for the larger society. A functionalist view understands social inequalities as a reflection of people’s varying levels of benefit to the group.
Later theorists criticized functionalism for its use of research that was ahistorical, meaning that it did not acknowledge the specific historical experiences of a group and thus attempted to understand societies without taking into consideration their connections to other cultures. For instance, functionalists largely ignored the impacts of colonialism on small, seemingly isolated populations, arguing instead that social stratification—and, consequently, global political inequalities—was an unyielding and inevitable part of the process of becoming a “complex society.”

### Conflict Theory

Conflict theory, created by the late 19th-century political philosopher Karl Marx, offers a more pessimistic view. Marx argued that hierarchy is not a means of keeping society balanced but rather the main source of conflict among humans. He and Friedrich Engels originally conceptualized two classes of capitalism in terms of ownership. The bourgeoisie, descended from powerful families, were the owners of the means of production, while the proletariat were those who sold their labor and lived off a wage. The powerless majority, the proletariat, were far removed from the decision makers and power holders, who had separated the proletariat from their own skills through industrialization and mechanization. In this view, the conflict between those with wealth and the means of production and those without is the basis of all social conflict.
As more social scientists grappled with differences in class and wage, they began to critique conflict theory more. W. E. B. Du Bois ([1940] 1984), an American sociologist working in the early 20th century, added wage and race theories to the classic examination of class conflict. He questioned whether there was a relationship between one’s knowledge in a trade and one’s wages and subsequently concluded that the worth of labor was determined solely by capitalists (the bourgeoisie). Du Bois further observed that class distinctions were forming among Black groups in Philadelphia, mostly unnoticed by White people, who continued to generalize them as one monolithic group. His critique was that conflict theory did not take race into account as both an area wherein class differences occur and another area that can cause conflict (and detract from issues of class and wage). Du Bois’s pioneering ethnographic studies at the turn of the 20th century were among the earliest scientific research on Black Americans’ lived experience of race and racism in the United States. His influence on and relationship with anthropologist Franz Boas were significant factors in Boas’s own disavowal of race as a determinant of the value and worth of diverse cultures. Du Bois’s work remains relevant in the present day as anthropology continues to address its own historical roots in colonialism.

### Critical Race Theory

Critical race theory (CRT), developed by legal scholars in the 1980s, asserts that much of the inequity experienced by oppressed people in the United States can be understood through the critical lens of race. CRT states that racism is endemic, or regularly found in the laws, policies, and institutions of the United States. Thus, people who are socialized in American institutions often do not see the ways in which racism plays out in their daily lives. Notions of color blindness and meritocracy uphold the idea that racism either does not exist or is actually related to class, socioeconomics, or other factors. Color blindness is the idea that people “don’t see color,” meaning that they are unaware of the ways in which someone may experience the world because of the color of their skin. A meritocracy is a system in which people succeed entirely through their own hard work; thus, someone who believes in the notion of meritocracy overlooks any structural or racial inequities that may keep individuals from accessing the resources necessary for success (Delgado and Stefancic 2013). In the United States, these two concepts are often used together to blame poor (especially poor Black) individuals and families for their own misfortunes instead of looking to structural causes of poverty and income inequality. The term  is often used by politicians and the media to refer to a specific (Black or minority) demographic, even though statistically, White women are the most common recipients of government benefits. One way to challenge everyday endemic racism is to utilize counter-storytelling. These stories counteract the socialized assumptions that keep people of color marginalized. For instance, counter-stories are important in challenging the power of stereotypes such as the “welfare queen.”
Critical race theory has become a hotly debated topic among politicians in the United States. CRT is often misunderstood by critics, who see it as a one-sided examination of (particularly American) history and society because CRT examines society through the lens of power and oppression. It often focuses on which groups benefit from cultural changes, including such things as civil rights legislation, essential to a democracy’s guarantee of equal opportunity and protection under the law. In anthropology, CRT is an important tool for examining both modern institutions and the experiences of individuals in the United States, especially in regard to social inequalities. As just one example, CRT can shed light on the decisions made by those in power when redrawing the boundaries of voting districts. These decisions are often made with the goal of cementing a majority for a particular political party while diluting the voting power of citizens who don’t typically belong that party, a practice known as gerrymandering. It is important for social scientists to consider the potential role of race and racism in making these decisions. If race and/or racism were found to be a factor, then these political decisions would be considered an example of systemic oppression.

### Power

More contemporary frameworks of social inequalities include an understanding of power. This section dives into the concepts and frameworks used in studying power. To recap, power is the ability to exert control, authority, or influence over others; agency, which comes from power, is the capability to act and make decisions. Power can be conceptualized as both subtle and coercive; in some contexts, it’s obvious who has power and how it’s utilized, but in other contexts, there are power imbalances that are allowed in everyday life. The point of this section is to contemplate why people allow certain power imbalances to exist while challenging others. Often, people allow power imbalances that they benefit from and resist imbalances that they do not benefit from. To better understand this, it is useful to discuss various concepts related to power, including hegemony, the state apparatus, biopolitics, and necropolitics.

### Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci, famous for his writings on philosophy, political theory, sociology, linguistics, and history, came up with the concept of hegemony while imprisoned by the Fascist Italian government. A founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, he was arrested by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime for provoking class hatred and civil war and was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. In , composed of 33 notebooks written during his imprisonment, Gramsci writes about power using the notion of hegemony. Hegemony describes how people with power keep their power through the subtle dissemination of certain values and beliefs. Hegemony relies on the maintenance of a “groups’’ authority and various mechanisms through which those in marginalized groups accept the leadership of another group’s authority. These mechanisms include cultural institutions such as education, religion, family, and common practices of everyday life. When a paradigm is so dominant that no one questions it, it becomes hegemonic. For instance, the idea that the United States is a democracy, even though many Americans are disenfranchised from voting and several presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the election, could be considered a hegemonic paradigm.

### The State Apparatus

French Marxist philosopher Louis Pierre Althusser is known for his writings about ideologies of exploitation. Asking how those who are exploited continue to remain exploited, Althusser developed the concept of the state apparatus. The state apparatus consists of two intertwined but distinct sets of institutions, the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus, which function together to maintain state order and control. Repressive state apparatuses include institutions through which the ruling class enforces its control, such as the government, administrators, the army, the police, the courts, and prisons. These institutions are repressive because they function by violence or force. Althusser argues that the state also consists of ideological state apparatuses, which include distinct and specialized institutions such as religious institutions, public and private education systems, legal systems, political parties, communication systems (radio, newspapers, television), family, and culture (literature, arts, and sports). Ideological state apparatuses, although they include different institutions that are dominated by ruling class ideologies, are also sites where the ideologies of exploited classes can grow. Therefore, ideological state apparatuses can be places of class struggle and social change.

### Biopolitics

French philosopher Michel Foucault conceptualized power through biopolitics, which refers to the ways populations are divided and categorized as a means of control, often by the state. This categorization and division—in terms of race, religion, or citizenship status, for instance—seeks to further marginalize certain groups and increase the power of the state. Biopolitics can be understood as the use of power to control a population through surveillance, which Foucault refers to as  in his book The History of Sexuality ([1978] 1990). An example of biopower in action is government control of immigrants, especially undocumented migrants. In his ethnography Pathogenic Policing: Immigration Enforcement and Health in the US South (2019), medical and legal anthropologist Nolan Kline describes immigrant policing as a form of biopower that attempts to control and govern immigrants through tactics based on fear, making undocumented immigrants fearful as they go about the normal activities of their daily lives, with many afraid to even seek health services when necessary.

### Necropolitics

Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist Joseph-Achille Mbembe, known as Achille Mbembe, writes about power through the idea of necropolitics (the power of death). Necropolitics, an extension of Foucault’s biopolitics, explores the government’s power to decide how certain categories of people live and whose deaths are more acceptable. Mbembe describes this as a power to decide “who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not” (2003, 27). The power to determine a life’s worth resides within both political systems and the decisions that policy makers are tasked with. It has, quite literally, life-or-death consequences, from who has access to life-saving medical technology to who is most policed and most likely to end up in jail.
The Black Lives Matter social justice movement is a response to an understanding that modern necropolitics in the United States treats Black people as disposable. The Black Lives Matter movement has grown beyond the United States in response to other nations’ state policies that are seen as treating people of color as not worthy of protection or care.

### Agency

Agency, or the ability to act and make decisions, has become an important concept in anthropology because it helps make sense of how powerful institutions interact with individuals.
With the theory of agency and structuration, British sociologist Anthony Giddens paved the way for the growth of theories on how humans interact with systems. Systems are the powerful, overarching beliefs through which the world is organized, which influence the ways in which individuals interact with their world. Although they most often go unnoticed and unquestioned, systems influence the decisions humans make. In terms of social inequality, in systems with unequal access to resources, the ability to decide or the options that one can choose between differ depending on diverse variables. The more power people have, the more choices they may be presented with, and the more they can mold and shape the systems in which they live through their decisions.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu attempted to explain how societal structures are upheld and changed by processes generated by individuals. The idea of habitus, or the ingrained habits and dispositions that are socialized into people from birth depending on their status in society, is used to explain how individuals uphold cultural systems such as capitalism, class, racism, or patriarchal values. Habitus is understood both to imbue people with certain skill sets and perspectives according to their life experiences and to make possible social change because it understands systems as generative instead of static. For instance, the modern capitalist system has not always existed as know it is today. Many smaller decisions, practices, and consequences have formed and reformed capitalism, reflecting diverse interests over time.

### Resistance

In their attempts to better understand power and agency, Marxist and feminist anthropologists in the 1980s and 1990s wrote a number of ethnographies about the relationship between resistance and the systems that create social inequalities and oppression. Resistance, at the basic level, refers to the act of challenging power and domination. Power is nearly always resisted in both overt and subtle ways, but the difference is often reflected in how much agency individuals have in resisting systems of domination and oppression. This section uses the example of Palestine to explore ways in which Palestinians are resisting power.
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 dispossessed the Palestinians who were indigenous to the land. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and between 700,000 and 750,000 Palestinians were exiled from the portion of Palestine that became Israel.
While Israelis celebrate achieving independence in 1948, Palestinians refer to this period of displacement of hundreds of thousands from their homes as the Nakba, which translates from Arabic as “disaster” or “catastrophe.” The Nakba is ongoing in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, where the occupation by Israel is illegal according to international laws. The Nakba is also ongoing for members of the Palestinian diaspora (the dispersion of a people from their original home) around the world who do not have the right to return.
Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem live under a system of checkpoints, military occupation, and segregation from Jewish settlers. Palestinians in Gaza are living in an open-air prison with extremely limited access to clean water, inconsistent electricity, and no freedom of movement (Erakat and Azzeh 2016). Despite this level of oppression, Palestinians in different parts of the OPT and the Palestinian diaspora still have agency, and they use this agency in different ways to resist Israeli oppression and the devaluation of the Palestinian experience. While political and social movements are critically important for combating injustice and oppression, there are also Palestinians and Israelis working together to create cultural bridges between the communities. One example of this is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Founded in 1999 by pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, who was born in Argentina and moved to Israel as a child, and Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a group of Israeli, Arab, and Palestinian musicians who work to promote equality and understanding across sociopolitical divides. The orchestra travels and performs internationally as an “orchestra against ignorance,” founded on the idea that when musicians come together to create music, they must work in harmony and respect each other. Not only intended to forge strong bonds among the musicians, the orchestra also serves to highlight the importance of respecting cultural differences and of recognizing a common humanity within the Middle East as a whole. Barenboim states emphatically that the orchestra’s purpose is not to make peace but to create the conditions for peace. Ethnocentrism underlies oppression, and model initiatives such as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra serve as reminders of the importance of tolerance and respect as deterrents against oppression.


# Social Inequalities

## Systems of Inequality

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Explain the meanings of the terms racism, Whiteness, and White supremacy.
2. Differentiate between economic, social, and cultural capital in relation to class or social mobility.
3. Explain the relationship between capitalism and social inequalities.
4. Describe gender relations, patriarchy, and oppression.
Many introductory anthropological texts will examine how types of social stratification align with modes of production. This text has something of a different focus, critically considering what it means for some lives to matter more or less than others. This section looks at how modern modes of production create systems of social inequalities such as racism, classism, and sexism.

### Race and Racism

Racism is best understood as power intertwined with racial prejudice. Racism can be perpetuated through interpersonal, institutional, and systemic practices. Anthropologists Alan Goodman, Yolanda Moses, and Joseph Jones define racism in Race: Are We So Different? (2020) as the use of race to establish and justify a social hierarchy and system of power that privileges and advances certain individuals or groups of people, usually at the expense of others. Many individuals understand interpersonal examples of racism, but what are institutional or systemic forms of racism? To explore this question, this section will discuss the history of race and its social construction.
What Is Anthropology? discussed the fact that race is a social construct. Where did the social construct of race originate? Johann Blumenbach, a German physician and anthropologist, was influential in establishing existing racial categories. Working in the field of craniometry, a now debunked pseudoscience that studied human head shape and brain size, Blumenbach proposed five racial categories to divide humans in the late 1700s: “Caucasian” for White people, “Mongolian” for Asians, “Malayan” for Brown people, “Ethiopian” for Black people, and “American” for Indigenous people of the Americas (Goodman, Moses, and Jones 2020, 30).
Blumenbach intentionally made these categories hierarchical and put White people at the top of this hierarchy. In many ways, the remnants of this hierarchy still exist today. For instance, have you ever seen the term  on a form asking about race? Why does this term still exist? Many other labels from the classifications Blumenbach created have been challenged, but Caucasian is still used in both scientific and popular usage. Anthropologist Carol Mukhopadhyay (2008) argues that this term’s continued usage conveys a false scientific authority of Whiteness.
Black anthropologists, including Williams S. Willis Jr. (1972) and others, have pointed out many racist undertones throughout anthropology’s history of studying the “other.” Anthropology began as the practice of White anthropologists studying the non-White other, which was rooted in an inherently unequal perspective. The White anthropologists’ beliefs were considered the “norm,” and people they studied were considered outside of the norm. In contrast, many of the first Black anthropologists trained in the United States were involved in activism, advocacy, public service, and social justice. These Black pioneers in anthropology were committed to fighting racism and instigating social change, focuses that were reflected in their scholarship and how they approached anthropology (Harrison and Harrison 1999). In “Reflections on Anthropology and the Black Experience,” St. Clair Drake, discussing why some Black scholars became anthropologists, said, “A few of us chose careers in anthropology forty to forty-five years ago because we believed the discipline had relevance to the liberation of black people from the devastating consequences of over four centuries of white racism” (1978, 86).
In 1941, anthropologists Allison Davis, Burleigh Gardner, and Mary Gardner argued that the United States had a racial caste system. Caste is a system of social inequality based on an individual’s circumstances of birth, wherein people are not allowed to move out of the social group into which they are born. Davis, Gardner, and Gardner observe that racism is a powerful force in American society that produces inequitable social relations that seem permanent but vary regionally and are subject to change over time. They argue that political, social, and economic structures all maintain that caste system, often in violent and coercive ways (Davis, Gardner, and Gardner 1941).
A number of scholars have also examined White racial identity; these “Whiteness studies” show that the racial category of White has been defined in different ways throughout US history. For instance, certain ethnicities in American history were not originally considered White but became included in the White identity over time. Whiteness is usually based on the maintenance or pursuit of power and proximity to power. Historian Nell Irvin Painter’s book The History of White People (2010) provides a detailed history of European civilization, race, and the frequent worshipping of Whiteness and explains that the concept of one White race is a recent invention.
White privilege is conceptualized as the ways in which White people have been given advantages at the expense of other populations. In Peggy McIntosh’s classic article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1989), she compares White privilege to an invisible weightless knapsack that comes with special provisions or advantages. According to McIntosh (who identifies as White), these advantages—or even just lack of obstacles—include not having to think about one’s race all the time, knowing that one will probably be represented wherever they go, and not worrying about having to speak for all the people of one’s racial group, among many other examples. Thus, White privilege is the experience of one’s Whiteness as the standard.
White privilege is often linked to the cultural concept of White supremacy, which is the idea that White people are a superior race and should dominate society at the expense of other, historically oppressed groups. People often think of White supremacy as extremist behavior, but White supremacy can actually be seen in many examples of systemic social inequalities. Ideologies of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis are examples of overt White supremacy that many people acknowledge as being racist. However, there are many covert examples of White supremacy that are problematic and racist but are overlooked.
The concept of White supremacy is a contentious one in modern media and politics. You may have come across an image like the one in  explaining different types of White supremacy. Although the examples in the diagram labeled “Overt” can be agreed on as socially unacceptable by most people in American society, the examples in the “Covert” section are often explained on an individual level instead of as a symptom of racism. For instance, the school-to-prison pipeline can often be explained as the consequence of individuals who do not obey the rules instead of a consequence of underfunded schools and racist policies.
The avoidance of talking about race, or racial refusal, can be understood as a silent form of racism. Anthropologist Dána-Ain Davis, in her ethnography Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (2019), writes that not acknowledging race in certain contexts can perpetuate inequalities. For her study of Black women who give birth to premature infants, Davis interviewed Black mothers and their partners; NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) staff, including nurses and doctors; birth workers; and March of Dimes administrators. In her research, Davis found that many doctors refused to discuss race and consequently ignored how racism is connected to disparities in health, premature birth, and medical treatment. Instead, discussions of premature birth disparities centered on class, despite the fact that Davis interviewed professional Black women who were college educated. Davis argues that racial disparities and medical racism perpetuated by systemic and structural racism cannot be addressed in healthcare settings if healthcare workers do not discuss race. This racial refusal has a historical precedence in the United States, where history and how that history has affected people’s lives is routinely omitted (Davis 2019, 88).
Finally, microaggressions are everyday instances of racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and other isms that are observed in the world as thinly veiled insults directed toward individuals from historically excluded groups. People who commit microaggressions might not even be aware they are committing them. Microaggressions include verbal and nonverbal snubs and insults that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to individuals based solely on their identification with a marginalized group. For example, one of the coauthors of this chapter, Saira Mehmood, identifies as a Muslim woman of South Asian descent, born in New Orleans. Saira is often asked, “Where are you from?” When she answers, “New Orleans,” the next question is often “Where are you really from?” This type of microaggression denies Saira’s agency as an American.

### Class

Class refers to a group of people with the same socioeconomic status and proximity to power. In a class-based system, status stems from wealth and one’s proximity to the power that wealth builds. Economically, class systems are most often associated with the capitalist mode of production. People in the United States often think of the term middle class when considering class systems.
Capitalism—the economic mode of production based around markets, ownership of land and resources, and wage labor—has produced classes that are grounded in the acceptance of the idea that earned wealth or status is the basis for social hierarchy within a nation. In capitalist nations, a person’s status in society directly relates to the amount of money they have acquired or the position they have achieved in their career. Class-based systems often emphasize social inequalities because of the hegemonic idea that relation to capital determines a person’s value in society. For instance, Bill Gates is looked up to for his status as a billionaire, while those who work in fast food are often seen as not deserving of a living wage. This system of inequality, especially in the United States, is tied to the idea of meritocracy, with those at the top of the class system assumed to have worked hardest or to be most deserving of high-level positions and those at the bottom assumed to be personally at fault for their lack of wealth.
Capitalism includes the concept of social mobility, or the ability of an individual to move up into higher and thus more powerful classes merely by working hard. Social mobility is the basis for the “American Dream,” the idea that poor Americans can attain a higher class. On the other hand, anthropologist Katherine S. Newman has done decades of research on downward social mobility, or the ongoing loss of capital and ensuing loss of social status. Newman (1999) found that in the last decades of the 20th century, divorce, emigration, company downsizing, and technological advancement left many middle-class individuals struggling to maintain their class (also see Gans 2009). Furthermore, the 2008 recession and the economic crash experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic led to downward social mobility for millions.
In addition to class, the United States also uses the concept of “collar.”  jobs are assumed to require higher education, involve less manual labor, and pay more, while  jobs are considered less skilled, more manual, and lower paying. However, Forbes magazine found that there are many “blue collar” jobs (e.g., plumbers and electricians) that have higher earnings than many “white collar” jobs (such as entry- or mid-level finance), yet they carry lower status within US social hierarchy. What distinguishes white-collar from blue-collar jobs if it isn’t just about how much money they make? German social scientist Max Weber argued that there were considerably more than two classes that determined the social inequalities and conflicts among people in capitalist societies. In his seminal essay “The Distribution of Power with the Community: Classes, Stände, Parties” (2010), originally published in German in 1921, Weber argues that there are multiple, overlapping systems from which to gain power and links social stratification to three components: socioeconomic status, prestige, and political party connections.
Power, in capitalist and class societies, often stems from capital, which is wealth in the form of money or other assets. Economic capital is monetary but is not the only form of capital. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu distinguished between various forms of capital: economic, social, cultural, and symbolic. Bourdieu defined social capital as the nonmonetary resources people use to gain social status, such as mutual acquaintances, shared cultural knowledge, or shared experiences. Social capital can also determine one’s power. Cultural capital refers to the competencies, skills, and qualifications that people acquire that create cultural authority; in an institutionalized form, this takes the form of educational attainment. Symbolic capital, or the resources available to an individual because of honor, prestige, or recognition, is tied to economic, social, and cultural capital. For instance, successful athletes often have symbolic capital, and this type of capital can increase their social capital and economic capital with endorsements from corporations and other opportunities. However, athletes can also lose their symbolic capital when a scandal or controversy involving them is uncovered, resulting in them losing their endorsements and contracts, which in turn affects their economic and social capital.
A good example of how individuals utilize social capital in the United States is the networking that exists in top-tier schools. In Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs (2016), sociologist Lauren Rivera utilizes participant observation to show how top-tier investment banks, consulting firms, and law firms decide who gets hired and who doesn’t, drawing on analysis of social and cultural capital in the American class system. Often, interviewers from elite firms use the phrase “not a good fit” when deciding not to hire someone in order to skirt around potential accusations of discriminatory intent. Riviera concludes that if a candidate is not from a top-tier school, the only way for them to get hired by such a firm is to have some other social capital connection vouch for their abilities.
When those with symbolic capital use their power against those with less power in order to change their actions, they are exercising symbolic violence. Symbolic violence is a type of nonphysical violence manifested in power differentials between social groups (e.g., upper class and lower class). For Bourdieu, symbolic violence reinforces ideologies that legitimize and naturalize the status quo. In many instances, symbolic violence reinforces social inequalities. This is perhaps most evident in the language used when referring to other groups. During the long history of migrations toward the US-Mexico border, symbolic violence has been used linguistically by English speakers to refer to migrants in terms that alienate them and set them outside of a common human identity. Labels such as “illegals,” “illegal aliens,” and “undocumented workers” are applied across cultures, defining families and individuals by a single dimension. Linguistic slurs are especially associated with symbolic violence. When human beings are represented in such simple and stark terms, it can become more socially acceptable to oppress them and see them as undeserving of empathy and respect.
Capitalism and class systems can also be analyzed in terms of race. Initially popularized by political science and Black studies scholar Cedric J. Robinson in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983), racial capitalism is the process through which the key aspects of capitalism (credit/debit, production/surplus, capitalist/worker, developed/underdeveloped, etc.) become articulated through existing relations of racial inequalities. In Robinson’s framework, capitalism is racial not because of some conspiracy to divide workers or to justify slavery but because racialism had already spread through Western feudal society when capitalism developed. Racial capitalism can clearly be seen in the slave trade and colonialism. Scholar Saidiya Hartman states that slavery still “persists as an issue in the political life of black America . . . because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago.” Hartman describes this as “the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment” (2007, 6). Slavery was a racialized system of capitalism, one that continues to exploit others to the present day.
Class systems emphasize social inequalities because for some people to have money and power, those individuals must exploit and oppress other groups. Capitalism and class societies are often supported by the ideas that those with power earned that power and those without it have individual moral failings instead of acknowledging that the structure of capitalism, which necessitates a working class, generates inequalities.

### Gender and Patriarchy

Although there is a detailed exploration of gender, patriarchy, and power in Gender and Sexuality, this chapter will discuss how gender is tied to social inequalities. Anthropologists have studied how gender relations play a big part in experiences of inequality. Gender relations can interact with various other powerful cultural institutions to further oppress individuals.
An important concept to grasp when seeking to understand gender and power is patriarchy, a system of social inequality based on gender in which power is assumed to be in the hands of men and characteristics associated with femininity are less valued. Patriarchy is related to male lineages and contexts in which men hold more political, social, and economic power or prestige. Recently, the claim that patriarchy remains a powerful force has been challenged by some social commentators, who argue that this system of oppression does not exist in modern society and that women and men experience equal opportunities in terms of employment, rights, and salary. Many anthropologists and other social scientists challenge this claim, pointing out ways in which patriarchy still impacts women’s lives.
Many anthropologists have made connections between gender and patriarchy, poverty, and race. In her fieldwork in the poor, mostly Black midwestern suburb of “Meadow View,” sociologist Sharon Hicks-Bartlett (2000) observed a particular type of oppression experienced by local women. Women living in poverty were relied upon and expected to keep their families together. Hicks-Bartlett described women tasked with managing low-wage, part-time work in a place where public systems of care and assistance, or even buses, were largely unavailable.
The interpersonal and even internalized forces of patriarchy and power can also make women “compete to lose,” meaning they will deliberately not succeed at some things in order to gain social capital among their peers. For instance, anthropologist Signithia Fordham, (2013) who spent two years studying the interactions of Black teenage girls in a predominantly White high school (which she aptly named “Underground Railroad High School”), found that the girls in this middle-class high school downplayed their achievements in order to fit in with peer groups and friends. Academic success was sometimes experienced as a social hindrance for those whose goals were family and children.