Inequality

among Men

Andre Beteille

PAVILION SERIES

SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY

BASIL BLACKWELL ■ OXFORD

© Basil Blackwell 1977

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission of Basil Blackwell &
Mott Limited

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Beteille, Andre
Inequality among Men. - (Pavilion series).
Index.
ISBN 0-631-17410-9
0-631-17420-6 Pbk.
1. Title 2. Series
301.44 HM146
Equality

Set in Monotype Times and Grotesque

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Billing & Sons Limited, Guildford, London and Worcester
Contents

Preface ix

1 The Two Sources of Inequality 1

2 Evaluation and Hierarchies of Status 24
3 Organisation and Structures of Power 48
4 Wealth, Property and Social Class 73
5 Race and Social Stratification 101
6 Continuity and Change 129
7 The Egalitarian Society 153

Index 173

£94624
For Radha
Preface

When I was invited by Professor F. G. Bailey, the editor of this

series, to contribute a volume to it, the only conditions placed were
that the book should deal with a significant subject and that it should
be so written as not to baffle the general reader. I chose to write on
inequality because it is one of the central problems of every human
society; it is also the kind of problem on which all major lines of
social enquiry—in the fields of economics, politics, religion and
kinship—tend to converge. Enquiries into what is called social
stratification have over the years become highly technical in
character. I hope I am not too far wrong in believing that it is still
possible to discuss the problem in a significant way without demand¬
ing too much expert knowledge from the reader.
In this study I have taken as my point of departure the distinction
made by Rousseau between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ inequality. The
importance of this distinction has been recognised by students of
society and culture for two hundred years; but what we are coming
to realise only now is that the distinction, besides being important, is
also ambiguous, and perhaps inherently so. Since I have not found
it possible to debate this point at length in the body of the book,
I ought to say here that I consider it to be of crucial significance.
I have adopted a comparative approach, deliberately ignoring the
distinction between sociology and social anthropology. The study of
social stratification has developed as a specialisation within
sociology, in practice concerned largely with the study of advanced
industrial societies. But social anthropology, which began with the
study of primitive or preliterate societies, has a great deal to con¬
tribute to the understanding of inequality, if only for the reason that
no other discipline has shown more forcefully the ambiguous nature
x Preface
of the distinctions people make between what is social and what is
natural.
While the treatment of the problem is comparative, no attempt
has been made to catalogue every form of inequality in every society.
The empirical material has been selected in relation to a particular
argument. Some societies have been discussed in more than one
chapter, and others not at all. If the argument is valid, then it can be
applied to any society, whether or not it has been discussed here.
I hope I have covered a sufficiently wide range of cases to persuade
the reader that the argument can indeed be applied to others.
The ideas presented in this study have grown over the years
through discussions with many persons, mainly students. I find it
difficult to single out any name from among these for special mention.
Mr R. L. Kalra typed the manuscript and Miss Malini Chand
prepared the Index; I am grateful to them for their help.

Andre Beteille Delhi School of Economics

14 June 1976
 1
The Two Sources
of Inequality

The spirit of the age is in favour of equality, though

practice denies it almost everywhere . . .
Nehru The Discovery of India

The great paradox of the modern world is that everywhere men

attach themselves to the principle of equality and everywhere, in
their own lives as well as in the lives of others, they encounter the
presence of inequality. The more strongly they attach themselves to
the principle or the ideology of equality the more oppressive the
reality becomes. Their attachment even makes it difficult for them
to consider dispassionately and objectively whether the inequalities
which surround them are increasing or decreasing. Every statement
that inequalities are decreasing in some spheres of social life seems
to call forward a counter-statement that they are increasing in others.
To turn a moral question into a sociological one is the ambition
of every student of society, but it is not an ambition which many can
reasonably hope to fulfil.
The two principal political ideologies of the present age, democ¬
racy and socialism—either singly or in various combinations—are
built on the premise of equality for all human beings. These great
ideologies and their corresponding institutional structures were born
and took shape in recent times in the Western world. Soon after
their emergence in the West they spread to other parts of the world
so that today they have come to acquire a universal character. The
ideologies of equality are simple in their essential features, but the
realities they confront differ greatly from one society to another and,
within the same society, from one sphere of life to another.
In an age where the ideal of equality has so much fascination, any
attempt to interpret inequality runs the risk of being condemned as
being by implication a justification of it. The risk is all the greater
2 The Two Sources of Inequality
when the attempt is to show that inequalities are rooted in features
which are inherent in all human societies. There are many who
believe that sociologists, like the moral philosophers of an earlier
age, should not only make men more aware of their predicament
but also show them a way out of it. People either expect too much
from the science of society or are too easily disposed to believe the
worst about it.
Industrialisation gave a new turn to inequality in Western society.
Many of the old forms of inequality disappeared or became attenu¬
ated while some new forms emerged. It is perhaps natural that initi¬
ally and to some extent even now people’s attention should be turned
to those forms of inequality which are being eroded. New social
forms take time to be recognised, particularly when they are not
institutionalised or are contrary to the norms of a society. Further,
there can be no doubt that with economic advances and the mitiga¬
tion of the more extreme forms of poverty, inequalities have become
less visible if not less harsh in Europe and North America as com¬
pared to their own past and to what prevails in the poorer countries
of Asia and Latin America. Thus people in the former countries
can be far more optimistic about the future of equality, and inequality
can therefore be more easily studied as a technical problem within
sociology.
The position is very different in many of the countries belonging
to what is called the Third World. There traditional forms of
inequality, sustained by centuries of economic stagnation, are still
very much in evidence. The most gross forms of poverty and the
most palpable differences in life chances between classes and between
communities are to be encountered there. Inequality is not some¬
thing merely to be measured by technical devices, but is visible to
the naked eye. Then there is the question of the inequalities, believed
by some to be increasing, between these countries and the advanced
countries of the West, which gives an additional piquancy to the
perception of the problem as a whole.
There is another difference between the advanced and the back¬
ward societies which must be noted here. The advanced countries
are ‘advanced’ not only materially but also ideologically. The
ideology of equality has taken deep roots there and has permeated
every sphere of life. Hierarchy, which Marx described as the ideal
form of feudalism, ceased to be the ideal for Western societies a
long time ago. There is between the living generations in these
 The Two Sources of Inequality 3
societies no gap, or only a small gap, in the definition of what ought
to be.
The countries of the Third World are not only ‘backward’ economi¬
cally, but many of them are also ‘traditional’ in their culture.
Contemporary India provides a good example of this kind of society.
It is not as if new ideas and values have made no impact on it. If
anything, the ideology of equality is proclaimed more loudly and
stridently there than in countries where it has been institutionalised
for a century or more. But lurking behind these proclamations are
old values and old habits of mind which see the pre-existing inequali¬
ties among men as a part of the natural scheme of things. Hence in
these countries a sociological discussion of inequality tends to cut
too close to the bone and may easily be represented as a defence of
traditional values and institutions.

What exactly is involved in turning a moral question into a sociologi¬

cal one ? I shall not attempt to provide an exhaustive answer to this
here. The whole book may in fact be viewed as an exercise in sociol¬
ogical reasoning as applied to the understanding of a specific problem.
The particular style of this reasoning, its distinctive way of relating
facts to ideas can be best revealed through a systematic examination
of a problem which has engaged the attention of sociologists for
over a century. Here a few preliminary observations will be made to
prepare the ground for the more detailed treatment which is to
follow.
Historically, the first step towards a sociological understanding
of the problem was taken when a distinction was made between
natural inequalities among men and inequalities in their conditions
of existence. In pre-industrial societies, which were generally organ¬
ised on a hierarchical basis, existing inequalities must have appeared
at one and the same time both natural and social. Just as men are
naturally superior to animals, so also different orders of men born
into different castes or estates are naturally endowed with unequal
abilities, aptitudes and aspirations. This view of the world was
worked out in its most elaborate form in Hindu India, but it was also
present in other civilisations, including that of Christian Europe.
It is customary to go back to Rousseau to trace the first modern
statement of the distinction which forms one basis of the sociological
approach to the problem of inequality. Rousseau maintained that
natural or physical inequalities among men were small and unim-
 4 The Two Sources of Inequality
portant, and he turned his attention to what he called moral or
political inequalities such as those of wealth, honour and power.
These he believed to be based on convention and to be established,
‘or at least authorised by the consent of men’.1 It is clear that
V Rousseau believed that conventions could be changed to the greater
advantage of men, but it is not clear how far he saw that it is in the
nature of all conventions to create and sustain inequalities.
Men are no doubt free to discard particular conventions and to
institute new ones, although this freedom is perhaps not as great as
it was believed to be by Rousseau’s successors. It is altogether a
different question whether they can live without any kind of con¬
vention whatsoever. The argument of this book is that society is
inconceivable without conventions and rules, and that these consti¬
tute the seedbed of what may be called social as opposed to natural
inequality.
While the distinction between inequalities based on nature and
those based on society is of fundamental importance, it is by no
means easy to apply the distinction consistently in practice. Among
inequalities established by nature, Rousseau includes differences of
‘age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the
soul’.2 These are attributes of very different kinds, and they are not
all given the same importance in every society. Even if we admit that
there are differences everywhere in nature, these differences are
turned into inequalities only through a process of evaluation, and
evaluation is essentially a social or cultural process.
Rousseau talks about a difference of ‘the qualities of the mind’ as
constituting one kind of natural inequality. To be more specific, we
may talk about intelligence, and today it is quite common to measure
*■ inequalities of intelligence among people. In order to do this in a
scientific way, psychologists are obliged to give a precise and more
or less limited meaning to the term intelligence. Now if we are to
proceed at all systematically, we must at some stage try to find out
how much weight is to be given to differences of intelligence in this
sense as against other differences, say of beauty or bodily strength.
This takes us back again to standards of evaluation which vary from
one society to another.
An important feature of the sociological approach is that it is by
its nature comparative. Even a cursory glance at existing patterns
of inequality shows their extreme variability. No doubt there have
been in every civilisation men who have reflected on the nature of
 The Two Sources of Inequality 5
their own social hierarchy, its origin and source. But it is only when
we compare in a systematic way the inequalities in our own society
with those present in others that a sociological appraoch to the prob¬
lem is initiated. It hardly needs to be said that the possibilities of
systematic comparison between widely different societies were
strictly limited until a little over a hundred years ago.
Systematic studies of inequality based on the careful observation
and recording of facts began to be made in Western societies from
the beginning of the nineteenth century. These studies were at first
set almost entirely in a historical context, their objective being to
determine whether inequalities were increasing or decreasing. Des¬
criptions of facts were frequently mixed up with judgements of
value because the facts were not always easily available and because
most writers felt free and even obliged to express their judgement
on important moral questions.
During the last fifty years a vast body of empirical material has
been collected systematically covering almost every important aspect
of inequality in Western societies. Some of these studies, particularly
some of those conducted in the United States, are very detailed and
technical. A number of studies have been published in which com¬
parisons of patterns of stratification and rates of mobility are attemp¬
ted between the different industrial systems of the capitalist type.
More recently some scholars have turned their attention to the
systematic comparison of inequalities in the two types of industrial
society, the capitalist systems of Western Europe and North America,
and the socialist systems of Eastern Europe.
But if sociology is to be a truly comparative subject, then compari¬
sons must extend beyond the industrial societies of Europe and North
America. Sociology as a science developed in the West out of a study
of Western society, and even comparative sociology has in practice
confined itself largely to the comparison of Western or industrial
societies. The study of non-Western societies has been left largely
to anthropologists, ethnologists and historians, and the division of
labour between students of Western and non-Western societies has
in practice tended to be rigid, despite the acceptance in principle of
a comparative approach to the study of society.
As I have already indicated, the clearest and the most visible
forms of inequality are to be found today not in the industrial
societies of the West but in some of the predominantly agrarian
societies of the Third World. These societies reveal some of the
6 The Two Sources of Inequality
characteristics present in European societies prior to the nineteenth
century, but they also present their own distinctive features which
derive from a different religious and cultural tradition. In many of
them we see today the interplay of divergent and even conflicting
rules and standards. A study of inequalities in these societies helps
to throw into sharper relief patterns which are also present in Western
societies but which are there obscured by other factors.
Field studies of tribal societies by anthropologists have thrown
much light on the nature of social life in its simplest forms. It is no
longer possible to talk as in the past about either primitive com¬
munism’ or ‘primitive anarchy’. A sociological understanding of
inequality must take into account the insights gained from the study
of tribal and agrarian as well as industrial societies.
Comparative sociology helps us to test our ideas about the uni¬
versal features of social life. In the present case it helps us to find
out whether or not inequalities are inherent in social life as we know
it to be. In Rousseau’s time people sought answers to such questions
by arguing from first principles. Today we have access to a vastly
superior body of facts, collected and arranged systematically, and
these can be used for testing our arguments at every step. The facts
gathered by sociologists do not by themselves guarantee a knowledge
of the future, but then one must neither claim too much from soci¬
ology nor expect too much of it.

Human beings as we know them live everywhere in association with

other human beings to whom they are related by a variety of rights
and obligations. Some students of human society were struck by the
fact that there are parallels elsewhere in the animal kingdom, where
some species of insects, for example, have their own forms of associ¬
ation and their own division of labour. Thus, Radcliffe-Brown drew
attention to what he called the ‘social phenomena’ that are to be
found among bees in a hive in ‘the relations of association of the
queen, the workers and the drones’.3 However, this analogy does
not carry us very far for there are fundamental differences in the
social phenomena observed among human beings and among other
members of the animal kingdom.
The most obvious difference between animal and human societies
is that in the former the patterns of behaviour which express and
sustain the relations of association are transmitted through a genetic
code, whereas in the latter they are transmitted, in addition, through
 The Two Sources of Inequality 7

a cultural code. Now the cultural code has enormously greater

plasticity than the genetic code which appears by comparison to be
fixed and rigid. It is thus that we see enormous variability in the
forms of association from one society to another among humans,
whereas these forms tend to be fixed for the species as a whole among
other members of the animal kingdom.
Thus what each and every human society has and what makes
human societies unique is a body of collective representations. The
concept of collective representations was formulated and developed
by Emile Durkheim and a group of sociologists in France around
the turn of the present century. It is now an indispensable tool in the
interpretation of social life. The concept is not without its difficulties.
It is diffuse and ambiguous and, despite its extensive use by soci¬
ologists for three-quarters of a century, we seem to be no nearer to
a more precise definition of it than was proposed by Durkheim.
Collective representations are the ideas, beliefs and values held
in common by the members of a given society. They have, as it were,
a life of their own, and it is by their means that the individual defines
his identity in relation to other individuals and to the universe in
general. The great significance of collective representations is revealed
in the fact that individual modes of thought and perception differ
greatly from one society to another, and are largely similar within
the same society or the same sector of society.
We naturally expect that the ideas, beliefs and values which regu¬
late life in an industrial or even an agrarian civilisation will be rich
and complex, but investigations by anthropologists have shown
that the collective representations in even the most primitive tribal
societies are remarkably elaborate in nature. Man nowhere perceives
the world around him directly; everywhere there are elaborate cul¬
tural categories which mediate between him and his universe. These
categories act as filters through which objects, events and persons
are perceived and evaluated.
Let us take first man’s relations to physical things. Even in the
most primitive societies physical things are not simply things that
exist in their natural form, but are invested with meaning and signific¬
ance. Birds, animals, trees and plants, moving and stationary things
are all classified and graded. In an essay on primitive classification
published in 1903, Durkheim and Mauss4 argued that man does
not leave anything in nature untouched but classifies everything
according to the principles of his own social organisation. This is
8 The Two Sources of Inequality

perhaps too extreme a statement, and it may be best to say that

similar principles of classification and evaluation are applied to the
social and the natural orders.
It is true that modern man lives less close to nature than primitive
man, and this is why his categorisation of birds, animals, trees and
plants is less elaborate and more fragmentary. In industrial societies
other things such as buildings, monuments, gardens and parks
surround man and constitute his immediate physical environment.
In every such society these objects, which are in a more direct way
the products of his creation, are in their turn categorised and graded.
The French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, has tried to
examine the relationship between nature and culture through a
detailed and systematic study of customs relating to food.5 Many are
aware of the elaborate and strictly defined modes of food preparation
developed in civilisations such as the European, the Chinese and the
Indian. Levi-Strauss has revealed the surprising fact that food pre¬
paration is an elaborate affair even among the most primitive of
tribal communities. Not everything that is edible is in any society
regarded as food. Different food substances have to be differently
prepared, and the preparations have to be served in a certain order
which is governed by occasion, place and time.
The most important consideration from our point of view is that
food is in every society made the object of more or less systematic
evaluation. In no society are all kinds of food accorded equal value;
different varieties of food are associated with different levels of social
prestige. Some varieties of food are regarded as particularly appro¬
priate for feasts, banquets and parties; others are regarded as plain
or homely fare. Clearly there is some association between the social
prestige of food and its scarcity or cost, but the work of Levi-Strauss
has provided ample evidence to show that this cannot be the sole
explanation of the hierarchy of foodstuffs.
Next to food, dress and adornment are objects which engage the
attention of individuals in every society. These also are items of
culture in the sense that there are collective standards which govern
their choice and use, although perhaps here new fashions alter the
standards more easily than in the matter of food. The association
between social prestige and modes of dress and adornment is too
well known to require detailed discussion. One of the interesting
features of modern living seems to be that those who set out to
repudiate all fashions in dress end at best by setting up a new fashion,
 The Two Sources of Inequality 9

giving further testimony to the pervasive role of evaluation in social

life.
Having found that man applies standards of evaluation to all
kinds of material objects—those which surround him and those
which he creates—it would be surprising if we were to find that he
does not apply them to other human beings. We do find indeed that
individuals and groups are subjected to evaluation in every human
society. I must make it clear again that I am not talking now about
personal assessment which varies from one case to another, but
about standards and criteria of evaluation which are socially defined
and which form a part of what I earlier described as collective repre¬
sentations.
On the question of evaluation, the well-known American soci¬
ologist, Talcott Parsons, maintains,

But given the process of evaluation, the probability is that it will

serve to differentiate entities in a rank order of some kind. Exactly
equal evaluation of two or more entities may of course occur, but
it is a special case of evaluative judgement, not a demonstration
of its irrelevance.6

We shall take two aspects of the individual members of a society

which, according to Parsons, are everywhere subjected to evaluation:
their qualities and their performances.
In modern industrial societies performance or achievement is
generally given pride of place. This is the case whether or not the
economic system is organised on the basis of the private ownership
of the means of production, although it is true that it is in capitalist
societies that we see the full play of the spirit of individual achieve¬
ment through competition. But as Michael Young pointed out some
years ago, a meritocratic society is by no means the prototype of an
egalitarian society.7 Indeed some may doubt if a society based on a
meritocracy is in all ways more desirable than other types of societies
of which history provides examples.
What Parsons describes as ‘quality’ in contrast to performance is,
as he shows convincingly, not wholly irrelevant even in the most
highly competitive and achievement-oriented societies. Birth, family
status and ethnic identity are taken into account in the ranking of
individuals even in modern American society. In other, e.g. pre¬
industrial, societies—which are more static and have a greater
10 The Two Sources of Inequality

historical depth—a large number of such qualities are recognised

and serve as criteria for differentiating and ranking individuals.
Gradation in terms of quality has been a conspicuous feature of
the pre-industrial civilisations of India, China and Europe. No doubt
some carried it further than others, but they all differed in this matter
from modern industrial civilisation. The qualities of men are viewed
as being inherent in their nature and they are believed to be generally
though not invariably acquired by birth. Every civilisation has of
course its own theories of human nature, and even our modern
scientific civilisation has not succeeded in discarding altogether the
view that human nature is to some extent unalterable.
If we now return to Rousseau we will be able to understand a
little better why the distinction proposed by him between ‘natural’
inequality and ‘moral’ inequality is so difficult to apply in practice.
Natural inequality is based on differences in quality, and qualities
are not just there, so to say, in nature; they are as human beings have
defined them, in different societies, in different historical epochs.
What modern anthropology teaches us is that human beings create
not only their own ‘morality’ but in a way also their own ‘nature’ by
investing everything around them with meaning and value.
The most obvious example in the modern world of the way in
which natural or physical differences are invested with moral or
cultural significance is to be found in our attitudes to race. What is
race, and how should we view differences of race? Are differences
of race wholly an aspect of nature or are they also an aspect of
culture? As physical anthropologists discovered soon after they
began to make systematic studies of race, it is extremely difficult,
some would say even impossible, to break up the human species into
a number of natural kinds.
All kinds of differences in physical features are of course present.
But if we take differences in skin colour, for example, we get a totally
different distribution of the human population from the distribution
we get when dividing it according to blood groups. The geneticists
say that blood-groups which correspond to genotype are more
significant than skin colour which corresponds to phenotype. But
then what should we do about skin colour? Should we regard it as
being totally extraneous to human nature? Whichever way the
geneticist disposes of the problem, it will continue to be there for
students of society and culture so long as physical appearance as a
quality is subjected to evaluation.
 The Two Sources of Inequality 11
I have argued so far that human beings everywhere discriminate
among things and among persons, and that some kind of evaluation
is applied to both. Systems of evaluation differ greatly from each
other in their complexity and coherence, although there is always
the danger that other systems of classification and evaluation
appear simple and naive in our eyes. It is only by applying the
comparative approach that we recognise the specificity of our own
system of evaluation and the universality of evaluation as a social
phenomenon.
It is perhaps fruitless to ask whether we first categorise things
and then apply the scheme to society or whether our experience of
society provides us with certain categories in terms of which we
classify everything else. The evaluation of things and of persons is
something we can observe directly in all societies. What is important
for our argument is that discrimination and evaluation are inherent
features of culture and perhaps of the human mind itself, and these
processes are applied in similar ways to the world of things and the
world of persons.

I have argued in the preceding section that each society has a culture
or a set of collective representations of which evaluation is an inherent
feature, and that this provides a universal source of inequality. I
shall now argue that every society, as a set of interacting individuals,
is characterised by some degree of organisation which involves force,
power and domination, and that this constitutes a second universal
source of inequality.
The role of force, power and domination in the relations among
men has of course been a subject of continual discussion among
political philosophers since the days of Machiavelli, Bodin and
Hobbes. But there are several differences between the philosophical
approach to the problem and the sociological approach presented
here. For one thing, philosophers like Hobbes argued about man
and the commonwealth from first principles on the basis of certain
assumptions about human nature; the sociologist, on the other hand,
takes for granted the variability of human nature and bases his argu¬
ments on systematic comparisons among societies of different kinds.
Secondly, political philosophers, while talking about the distribution
of power, have almost always had the powers of the state in mind;
the sociologist considers in addition the distribution of power in
associations other than the state as well as in stateless societies.
12 The Two Sources of Inequality
Hobbes believed, not unlike Rousseau, that natural inequalities
among men, whether of the body or of the mind, are small and
inconsiderable, and the systematic subordination of some men to
others is a consequence or, better, an aspect of living in society. For
it is in their civil as opposed to their natural condition that men are
organised in terms of justice, law and power. In talking about power
or the ‘common Power’ here, Hobbes had of course the state in
mind,8 but we shall see that it is possible to talk meaningfully about
power in a variety of other social contexts as well.
If one views the state as the sole source and locus of power, one
can adopt either of two attitudes to the problem of power in social
life. One may argue that the state is essential to civilised living, to
both order and progress, and that it should therefore be maintained
if not strengthened. Alternatively, one may argue that the state is
a historically specific institution, that it arises in particular times at
particular places, that it can be negated, and that with its negation
inequalities of power will cease to exist. The sociological argument
on the other hand is that superordination and subordination based
on inequalities of power are inherent in all organisations of which
the state is one but not the only example.
Here also, as in the case of culture, the really decisive evidence
comes from the anthropological study of tribal communities. The
study of the simpler societies by the methods of intensive fieldwork
is barely fifty years old, and the systematic study of their political
life is of even more recent origin. Yet these studies have led us to
revise some of our basic ideas regarding the organisation of human
activities through which social life maintains its nature, form and
identity.
In the past people commonly held either of two diametrically
opposed views about the nature of life in what were called savage
societies. One view was that there was no law in the proper sense
among savages: what prevailed was the law of the jungle where
might was right and the weak were entirely at the mercy of the strong.
The other view was that in savage societies custom was king, that
the savage was such a slave to superstition that his life was auto¬
matically regulated by a blind adherence to custom, leaving no room
for force, power and domination in this regulation. The results of
Malinowski’s fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands revealed for the
first time the complex nature of the sanctions by which social life is
regulated among primitive peoples.
 The Two Sources of Inequality 13
Malinowski brought out the complex pattern of rights and obli¬
gations which bind individuals to each other in tribal societies, and
in the process showed that social life there is not self-regulating in
quite the same mechanical way in which it is in the societies of ants
and bees.9 In understanding social life among human beings even in
its simplest forms we have to take into account their codes of con¬
duct, the frequent departures from these codes in practice, and the
mechanisms for dealing with these departures. All men, whether in
primitive or in advanced societies, have rights and obligations, but
they are not by that reason all equal; some have superior rights in
defining the obligations of others.
Put in very simple terms, my argument is that it is in the nature
of a system of social relations that the rights and obligations of
people towards each other should be defined to some extent, and
that it is in the nature of a system of action that this definition
should remain to some extent ambiguous. It is thus that power and
domination lodge themselves as significant features of social life
everywhere. In a society where rights and obligations are defined
and perceived unambiguously, and accepted unequivocally, power
as we know it may cease to be significant but one may doubt if such
a society would continue to be a human society.
My argument may be best illustrated by examining the organisa¬
tion of social activities within a given territorial framework. It is a
truism that human beings everywhere have to live in a territory.
Living together in a particular village or district and having to inter¬
act with each other continually over a period of time require some
limitation and adjustment of interests among people. While this
requirement is present in all associations, we see its force most
clearly in the territorial group which is, moreover, a universal form
of association.
Every local community, however small or simple, has its own
division of labour. Men and women, old and young, have to perform
various tasks for themselves and for each other if the community is
to maintain itself. Under such conditions, when an individual
violates his obligations to another individual, this becomes to some
extent a matter of concern for the group as a whole. But the violation
of an obligation and the remedy for the violation are neither of them
simple matters. It has to be determined whether an obligation existed,
to what extent it has been violated, who was ultimately responsible
for the violation, what reparation should be made, to whom, by
14 The Two Sources of Inequality

whom, and in what manner. I would like to repeat that this is not
just deductive reasoning: anthropological fieldwork all over the
world has shown that these are questions which occur repeatedly in
all communities, everywhere.
Issues in dispute or doubt have to be settled and decisions must be
taken which will be binding on all the members of the community.
Now it is of course possible in theory for the entire collectivity to
arrive through consensus at decisions which will be considered by
each to be binding on all. But this is not how things work in practice
in the case of even small and compact groups with a simple division
of labour, and such a practice would clearly be impossible in the
case of large and dispersed groups with a complex division of labour.
In both cases there are persons who by virtue of their character and
position play a more decisive part than others in taking collective
decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of these positions as ones
of power and authority, since it is by virtue of them that some can
take decisions which are considered to be binding by all.
I have avoided giving formal definitions of power and authority,
but the discussion above will make it clear what kinds of considera¬
tion should enter into their definition; I would like only to add here
that some element of physical compulsion, potential or actual,
everywhere lies behind decisions that are regarded as authoritative.
Now, societies differ greatly in the extent to which positions of power
and authority are elaborated and related to each other. But such
positions are present in all societies even when they are not clearly
separated from other positions defined in terms of other attributes
and functions.
In a detailed and meticulous survey of politics and government in
tribal Africa, Professor Schapera showed that the simplest and the
most complex tribal societies share certain basic features in com¬
mon.10 All have territorial groups which may be small or large,
loosely or tightly co-ordinated. In the case of the most primitive
tribes, the local group is small and the co-ordination between local
groups is limited; there is nevertheless some apparatus, often merely
an aspect of the kinship system, through which activities are organ¬
ised, order maintained and conflict resolved. Where the local group
is only an extended kin-group, those in authority are generally
persons occupying senior positions in the kin-group. In other cases,
and at higher levels of territorial organisation there are chiefs of
various kinds. The point to bear in mind is that the differences
 The Two Sources of Inequality 15

between village headmen, titular chiefs and paramount chiefs are

differences of degree and not of kind.
It is perhaps necessary at this point to say a few words about the
distinction, made famous by British anthropologists, between seg¬
mentary and centralised political systems. It has been argued that
there are some political systems, called segmentary or acephalous,
where there are no kings, chiefs or headmen, and no concentration
or inequality of power, but where order is maintained through a
balanced opposition of segments which are equal and opposed at
every level. Some comments are required on this. If we take the
classic case of the Nuer tribes described by Evans-Pritchard, we
find firstly that no clear description is presented of how order is
maintained within the village or camp, which are in many ways the
most significant local groups. Secondly, at every territorial level we
have one lineage which is described as the dominant lineage; if the
concept of dominance is to have any meaning, it must relate to
inequalities of power. Taking all things together, it would appear
that the most satisfactory statement of the position is that of Professor
Gluckman, who says:

To some extent, the answer to this problem maybe that the govern¬
mental organisation which we find in states at these levels of
economic development has an inherent instability which contin¬
ually leads to its breakdown, so that the difference between tribes
organised under chiefs, and those which lack chiefs is not as great
as it appears to be.11

Where the organization of a number of local groups in a larger

system is weak, the apparatus through which this organization is
maintained and in which inequalities of power are rooted, is likely
to be weak or non-existent.
Students of human society make a distinction between the sphere
of kinship and the sphere of politics, and this distinction is particu¬
larly clear in the case of industrial societies. In tribal and also
agrarian societies the sphere of kinship is quite large, and some
anthropologists have sought to distinguish within it the domestic
domain from the politico-jural domain. Even if we argue that there
is no separate political domain among some of the simplest tribes we
must recognise that there are inequalities of power in the kinship
group through which social life in the community is organised.
16 The Two Sources of Inequality

This point needs to be made, for to the contemporary Western mind

the sphere of kinship is the sphere of equality; this is by no means
the case universally.
I have considered so far the problems of organisation only in
territorial groups. But these problems exist in all forms of association:
territorial groups such as the village or the state provide only a
kind of model through which we can understand and explain them.
The problems of organisation, and of the inequalities of power
inherent in them have been studied in diverse forms of association
ranging from religious sects (often based on egalitarian values) to
social clubs (designed generally for companionship among equals).
When we move from simple, small-scale tribal communities to
complex, large-scale industrial societies, positions of power and
authority multiply, and become more clearly defined and more
elaborately structured. Organisation is a pervasive feature of indust¬
rial societies, whether we take democratic or totalitarian regimes.
In these societies organisation is aided by technical devices of a kind
which was not dreamt of even in the most despotic of tribal societies.
Given the elaborate nature of the apparatus of power and authority
in industrial societies, it is difficult to see how control over it could
be made equally accessible to all.
It is far from my intention to argue that wherever there is a con¬
centration of power there must also be an abuse of power. That is a
separate question which has led some to the conclusion, which I
find to be of doubtful value, that the solution to our modern prob¬
lems lies in a return to a life based on simple, small-scale communities.
As I have said, even the simplest communities are not free from
inequalities of power, and if these generally appear small or neg¬
ligible, this may partly be because we assess them according to
standards which are not always appropriate to them.

I have tried to interpret the prevalence of inequality among men in

terms of two principal phenomena, evaluation and organisation.
These in their turn are rooted in culture on the one hand and power
on the other, without either of which human society as we know it
is inconceivable. Different scholars have given different degrees of
emphasis to these factors, some attaching more importance to com¬
mon values and others to power. But the interesting point is that
these are also the factors which, in the opinion of most, hold a
society together and ensure its continuity as a living whole. In other
 The Two Sources of Inequality 17
words, the very things which give order and coherence to society
are also responsible for maintaining inequality among its members.
Sociology began as a discipline by asking what holds a society
together, what gives it coherence and design, what makes it some¬
thing more than a mere aggregate of individuals. Today we no longer
put the question in the form in which it was put by moral philosophers
in the eighteenth century and earlier who wanted to discover how
and under what conditions individual human beings living in a state
of nature came together and created a society. Perhaps we realise
today that this question cannot be properly answered by the methods
available to us. Moreover human beings always and everywhere live
in society. The problem therefore is to find out not how society origi¬
nated but how it is maintained.
Among the first sociologists to raise this question and to attempt
a rigorous answer to it were Emile Durkheim and his associates in
France at the turn of the century. Durkheim drew on an earlier tradi¬
tion of French social thought, notably that of Montesquieu and also
of Rousseau, but gave his own distinctive answer to the question.
Collective representations, shared ideas and values, or culture are,
according to Durkheim, the fundamental factors that give unity,
coherence and design to social life. Durkheim has been reproached
by his critics for ignoring the place of force, power and domination
in society. It is true also that he did hot show systematically how
common values are linked to social inequality, although this has
been done by his most important modern interpreter, Talcott Parsons.
Other sociologists, notably Pareto, Mosca and Michels who were
all contemporaries of Durkheim, have emphasised the part played
by force, power and domination in holding society together. Their
work also can be related to an earlier tradition, going back in this
case to the fifteenth-century Italian political philosopher, Niccolo
Machiavelli. The work of Michels in particular presents a lucid
analysis of the relationship between organisation and the inequality
of power, a relationship which has been summed up in the ‘Iron law
of oligarchy’.12
We do not have a sociological theory which synthesises in a satis¬
factory way the two approaches presented above. Most attempts at
synthesis miss what in my view is the essential point that it may not
be possible to reduce the problem of either order or inequality to
one single, unifying principle. So far at least, attempts to reduce the
problem of power to that of ‘legitimate’ power and to explain it in
18 The Two Sources of Inequality

terms of culture have proved to be no more fruitful than attempts to

explain common values or systems of evaluation by a theory of
power or of material interests. In other words, the theoretical
approach of which I am mistrustful is the one for which the bad
name is ‘reductionist’ and the good name is ‘unified’; the approach
which I propose to follow is described as ‘pluralist’ by its advocates
and ‘eclectic’ by its critics.
Corresponding to the two principal sources of inequality are the
major dimensions of inequality, or its two major scales of gradation.
These are commonly described as the scale or dimension of status on
the one hand and of power on the other. Status relates to the esteem
and respect that are accorded to qualities and positions which are
valued in themselves; it is of the essence that esteem and respect are
here freely accorded. Power refers to the obedience and compliance
that some more than others are able to command by virtue of the
positions they hold in society; here it is of the essence that some are
able to impose their will on others despite their resistance.
It must be made clear that power and status are analytically
separable concepts, that the scale of status is different from that of
power. It is of course true that the same person may enjoy both
status and power, although not to the same extent in every society.
Some societies even take pains to keep the two separate in principle.
Thus, it has been said that in traditional Hindu society a separation
was made in principle between the Brahmin and the king, the former
being accorded the highest status, the latter enjoying the most
power.
It is also easy to see that whatever the formal principle might be,
in practice status and power can to some extent be converted into
each other in every society. Those to whom people show esteem and
respect of their own accord can and often do use their position to
command obedience from the same people and from others; but
there is a limit beyond which this becomes a hazardous venture, for
respect and esteem which are freely given can also be freely with¬
drawn. Likewise, those who command obedience also enjoy some
respect, if not from everyone at least from their subordinates; but
here again people in power seem to enjoy the most respect when they
are furthest removed from the ultimate source of power which is
physical compulsion.
In modern Western societies status and power are often confused
because under capitalism both are to a considerable extent associated
 The Two Sources of Inequality 19
with wealth. Wealth is esteemed as a thing in itself and it also enables
a person to have command over others. But this is by no means
the case in all societies, and even under the most extreme form of
capitalism there are other avenues than wealth to both status and
power.
One can in fact take examples from modern Western societies to
show that although status and power are often combined, the de¬
mands of the two are in many ways incompatible. Status groups
are as it were by their nature exclusive; the symbols of status are
exclusive and, if they are to maintain their superiority of status,
people must pursue exclusive styles of life. On the other hand, demo¬
cratic politics, which is one of the important avenues of power in
modern societies, requires aspirants to power to define their identity
in inclusive rather than exclusive terms. It is thus that in countries
like Britain—or India—leaders of the people often pursue one style
of life in private (for themselves and their family) and a different
style of life in public (for themselves and their constituents).
Thus it is clear that while status and power are to some extent
mutually convertible, one cannot be wholly reduced to the other.
Status and power are based on different principles which appear
beyond a certain point to be incompatible. Schemes of analysis
which seek to explain all forms of inequality by a single principle
often end with either tautology or platitudes. No general study of
inequality can be regarded as truly sociological unless it places due
emphasis on the almost endless variety of the actual forms of
inequality.
Given the fact that all societies apply schemes of evaluation, one
can think of many such schemes since the criteria of evaluation are
many. It would be useless to attempt an inventory of all the criteria
that have been devised and used by men throughout the world for
placing each other on a hierarchy of status. Even if the number of
such criteria is not unlimited, it must be quite large. One may perhaps
think of each culture as selecting from the total stock a limited
number of criteria and using them in the discrimination and ranking
of groups and individuals.
Clearly there are attempts within each culture to bring about some
consistency between the different criteria of evaluation, and one
obvious way of doing this is by placing the criteria themselves in
some kind of a hierarchy. Here again, one may say that a single,
unified hierarchy of all the criteria of evaluation recognised in a
20 The Two Sources of Inequality
society is more an ideal-than a reality. One may go further and say
that it is more an ideal of the ideologues than of the ordinary people
who in all societies apply more than one scheme of status gradation
without being acutely troubled by the need to be logically consistent.
The problems of organisations likewise vary greatly according to
the size, location and distribution of the population, the history of
the people, their social and cultural diversity, the material resources
available to them, and the technological apparatus at their command.
Just as human beings have in different places and times created a
variety of schemes of evaluation, they have in the same way devised
a variety of forms of organisation. As a consequence, the distribution
of power, like the gradation of status, varies from one society to
another.
Since we have argued that the gradation of status and the distri¬
bution of power vary to some extent independently of each other,
we must examine each of these separately and in their mutual rela¬
tionships in order to form a proper understanding of the systems
of social inequality. In its detail the system of inequality in each
society is a unique combination of a number of different factors.
This does not mean that societies cannot be grouped together for
purposes of comparative study. However, we must remember that
the number and complexity of the factors involved make all classi¬
fications to some extent arbitrary. There is no danger when we use
a classification as a rough guide in the systematic study of reality;
the danger arises only when we begin to regard it as a fixed and
unalterable scheme.

I shall now give a brief outline of the plan of the book. As I have
already indicated, I do not pretend to have a unified general theory
which will at once explain all forms of social inequality, and I do
not believe that such a theory exists or is likely to come into existence
in the forseeable future. At the same time, I do not propose to des¬
cribe a series of cases of social inequality, choosing from among the
many that are available a few on some basis of representativeness.
What I propose is to discuss some of the main or, better, more
interesting forms of inequality prevalent in contemporary societies
in terms of certain basic principles whose mutual relations, as I
have already indicated, are to some extent indeterminate.
I have briefly indicated above the nature of evaluation and its
significance for the gradation of status. In the next chapter I shall
 The Two Sources of Inequality 21
deal in greater detail with evaluation and hierarchies of status,
taking a number of familiar examples. After considering some of the
major premises on which systems of hierarchical values have been
built, I shall examine in detail social gradation in the Indian caste
system, which has gone further than perhaps any other system in the
elaborateness and rigour with which it has developed an ideology
of hierarchy. I shall then consider briefly gradations of status and
ideas of hierarchy in some other societies.
In chapter 3 I shall devote myself to the problems of organisation
and the distribution of power. Here I shall examine in some detail
the place of rules and sanctions in social life. After considering their
place in simple organisations, I shall show how rules and sanctions
are co-ordinated in organisations on a large scale. I shall discuss in
some detail the part played by the centralised state in modern
industrial societies in creating and maintaining inequalities of power
and, through them, other types of social inequality. I shall try to
show that the distribution of power sustains inequalities in demo¬
cratic as well as totalitarian regimes.
Inequalities of status and of power are universal features of
human societies. It is true that hierarchical values have been developed
much more elaborately in some societies than in others just as central¬
ised states have been organised much more efficiently in some
countries than in others, but the logic of hierarchy and of dominance
is in its fundamentals everywhere the same. There are two major
manifestations of inequality in contemporary societies which I shall
treat separately in the two succeeding chapters. Chapter 4 is devoted
to property and social class, and chapter 5 to race and social strati¬
fication.
Class is the term most widely used in the modern world to des¬
cribe the inequalities among groups or categories of persons. It is so
widely used, not only by scholars but by people in every walk of life,
that it may appear futile to try to fix a single, specific meaning to it.
Underlying the variety of meanings given to the term, there is the
view, often explicit and almost always implicit, that class is based on
economic factors. As is well known, Marx linked the concept of
class to the institution of property or private ownership of the means
of production. This in my view is the most fruitful way of looking at
class: but if we look at it in this way, we see it as being historically
specific, manifest in some societies but not in all, unlike status and
power which are universal features of social life.
22 The Two Sources of Inequality

In studying property and class, we examine as it were the interplay

of status and power in a given institutional field. Property, wealth
and income give access to things that are valued; income is valued in
itself and, under capitalism, it has a tendency to become the measure
of all values. Property, or the private ownership of the means of
production, also gives one control over persons. It is in this dual
role that property becomes the most important marker of inequality
in many societies.
Differences of race do not relate to social inequality in quite the
same way as those of property. For one thing, they are not manifest
in all societies or even in all complex societies. For another, even
when they are present they do not necessarily become significant
bases of social inequality. Two major historical deveopments,
colonialism and slavery, have mainly been responsible for structuring
inequalities of both status and power along the lines of race or
inherited physical difference. A consideration of these raises questions
about inequalities in the international system over and above those
present within national societies to which sociologists have mainly
confined their attention.
Chapter 6 deals with continuity and change. It examines first the
mechanisms through which inequalities are maintained in a society.
They are maintained through common values as well as the monopoly
of power. Competition for status through emulation, and competition
for office through participation do not necessarily remove inequali¬
ties; in fact they often serve to maintain them and to give them
legitimacy. Societies differ on the whole according to the degree of
disharmony between their existential and normative orders. When
the normative order is built on the premise of equality, inequalities
in the existential order are bound to be a source of tension, conflict
and change.
The last chapter deals with the egalitarian society. It re-examines
the concept of primitive communism in the light of evidence pro¬
vided by anthropological research. It also examines the part played
by the market on the one hand and the state on the other in dealing
with the problem of inequality. Although these have been viewed
since the beginning of the modern age as the principal institutions
through which inequalities might be removed, they have themselves
created new, less visible but no less real, inequalities while mitigating
some of the old.
 The Two Sources of Inequality 23

Notes and References

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’ in J.-J.
Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd.,
1938, p. 174.
2. Ibid.
3. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, Cohen
and West Ltd., 1952, p. 189.
4. Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification, University of
Chicago Press, 1963.
5. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, Jonathan Cape, 1970. This is
the first in a series of four volumes called Mythologiques.
6. Talcott Parsons, ‘A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social
Stratification’ in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.). Class,
Status and Power, A Reader in Social Stratification, The Free Press, 1953, p. 93.
7. Michael Young, The Rise of Meritocracy, Penguin Books, 1961.
8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Dent, 1973.
9. See in particular Bronislaw Malinowski, Crime and Custom in Savage Society,
Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1926.
10. Isaac Schapera, Government and Politics in Tribal Societies, Watts, 1956.
11. Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society, Basil Blackwell,
1965, p. 85. , , ,
12. Robert Michels, Political Parties, A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical
Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Dover Publications, Inc., 1959.