ANTH 1150 Chapter 12: Chapter 12.docx
10 Apr 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
A class is a group whose members possess similar amounts of power within a stratified society. Power is the ability to force other people to obey ones requests or demands. Power depends on the ability to provide or take away essential goods and services, and this ability in turn ultimately depends on who controls access to energy, resources, technology and the means of physical and psychological coercion. All state societies necessarily have at least two classes arranged hierarchically, the rulers and the ruled. In open-class systems, people can move up or down the hierarchy, as in modern western democracies. In closed-class systems, there is little mobility up or down. From an etic and behavioural viewpoint, classes can exist even when the members of the class deny that they constitute a class. Consciousness is therefore an element in the struggle between classes, but it is not essential for the existence of class differences.
