Topic 5: Groupness Review: 1) Non-reality of race as a biological grouping (Prof. Mann).

1. Topic 5: Groupness Review: 1) Non-reality of race as a biological grouping (Prof. Mann). a) Biological features (skin color, hair color, nose shape, etc.) distribute clinally (I.e., in graded morphological series that map onto geographical space).

2. Topic 5: Groupness Review: 1) Non-reality of race as a biological grouping (Prof. Mann). a) Biological features (skin color, hair color, nose shape, etc.) distribute clinally (I.e., in graded morphological series that map onto geographical space). b) Cline occurs because mating is possible and, indeed, occurs. Hence, the alleles distribute themselves in gradually changing frequencies over space.

3. Topic 5: Groupness Review: 1) Non-reality of race as a biological grouping (Prof. Mann). a) Biological features (skin color, hair color, nose shape, etc.) distribute clinally (I.e., in graded morphological series that map onto geographical space). b) Cline occurs because mating is possible and, indeed, occurs. Hence, the alleles distribute themselves in gradually changing frequencies over space. c) Hence, races are not biological groupings. They are not comparable to species.

5. Review: 2) Tendency of people to conceptualize humans as organized in groupings (Prof. Liberman). a) Could be that humans are biologically programmed to see people as organized into groupings (Gil-White);

6. Review: 2) Tendency of people to conceptualize humans as organized in groupings (Prof. Liberman). a) Could be that humans are biologically programmed to see people as organized into groupings (Gil-White); b) There may be implications here for the possibility of establishing and maintaining multi-ethnic social entities

7. Review: 2) Tendency of people to conceptualize humans as organized in groupings (Prof. Liberman). a) Could be that humans are biologically programmed to see people as organized into groupings (Gil-White); b) There may be implications here for the possibility of establishing and maintaining multi-ethnic social entities Incidentally: One of the goals of introductory Pilot Curriculum classes is to help you to learn to read and think critically and analytically. Prof. Liberman demonstrated the techniques of critical analytical reading in his presentation of Prof. Gil-White’s article.

8. TODAY’S TOPIC Groups as “Corporate” or Legal Persons • Want to inquire into the social purposes or functions of the formulation of groups as culturally-constructed categories.

9. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 Why did Al Queda want to kill people in the World Trade Center? What had those people done to them? www.alittletoolate.com/queen_bee.htm

10. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 ANSWER: They were perceived to be part of a group, defined as “enemies,” whether “infidels” or “Americans.” www.alittletoolate.com/queen_bee.htm

11. Another Example: African-American Conceptualization of Racial Groups as Corporate From National Public Radio, Morning Edition, March 22, 2002 Commentator Patricia Elam reflects on the historic number of black major Academy Award nominations, wondering if success at the Oscars will translate into lasting opportunities for blacks in Hollywood. (2:57)

12. “Did you hear the good news,” a stranger yelled at me as I rushed past. “No, what news?” I asked without stopping, suspecting he was high or crazy. “Miss USA is black from Howard University,” he crowed, puffing out his chest as if he was her father. I smiled as we shared pride in the accomplishments of this woman neither of us knew but to whom we felt a connection. As people who happen to be black, most of us are used to being excluded from things deemed to be American.

13. When one of us has been let into the circle, though, it feels like the gate has opened for all of us. This said, many of us will be real mad if there are no black Academy Award winners this year. … the worry that white audiences won’t identify with a black actor…

14. … if one of them [African-American actor] wins, these actors won’t just be winning for themselves, and they know it. That’s why Holly Berry cried when she won the Screen Actors Guild award, and why I and several of my friends cried with her. … but if one [African-American actor] wins on March 24 it will be a collective win that will cause me to weep again, call friends long distance, and maybe even share the good news with a stranger in the street.

15. Groups as Persons Groups can be recognized as primary persons, in the sense that the group as a whole is held accountable for the behavior of any one of its individual members. This is what we mean by considering the group as “corporate.” From Latin: corporatus, past participle of corporare, to make into a body, from corpus, body.

16. Groups as Persons • The individual members of the group are representatives of the larger entity in almost all aspects of their behavior. • What they do as individuals is attributed to (or socially recognized as) the conduct of the collectivity. • Thus, if a member of group A kills a member of group B, then group A as a whole is held accountable.

17. Groups as Persons • Consequently, there is pressure on every member of the group to monitor the actions of others within their group, • and to try to get those others to conform to socially recognized norms of proper conduct.

18. responsibility for D, O D, O D, O reflects upon Group A Group B Group C

19. Why Corporate Groups Anyway? Corporate groups help people to live together. •Culture has to figure out ways to get people to live together (Dr. Mann). This is necessary for the survival of individuals. • If you can get people to live together, then all individuals can receive some of the benefits of the accumulated culture housed in a large population. •Think of the benefits we receive on a daily basis from the accumulated culture of doctors, engineers, computer scientists, and so forth. • If the population were not large enough to support these specialist groups, we as individuals would not have their benefits.

20. How corporate groups help to live together? Question: if corporate groups are one cultural invention for holding people together, how do they do so? Answer: by having groups be understood as individual actors, it is possible to organize complex relationships into simpler ones. This allows collective force to be brought to bear on the regulation of individual conduct. A society consisting of thousands or even millions of people can be understood in terms of the interactions among a much smaller number of legal or corporate persons — the culturally-recognized groups, such as races, ethnicities, and we may as well genders. This makes large scale social processes intelligible to individuals.

21. Summary: as cultural inventions, corporate groups are ways of: (1) making broader collectivities intelligible to its individual members (intelligibility), and also (2) bringing the force of the group to bear on each individual member. (social control, regulation of conduct)

22. Corporate Groups as Descent Groups • putting together several pieces of the semester here. Recall “tracing backwards.” The problem of the father/husband role as essential to tracing backwards. • One of the key uses of descent (as a way of tracing backwards) is the constitution of corporate groups. • We will refer to such groups as “descent groups.”

23. Nations as Descent Groups • nations can be understood in some measure as descent groups. • this is because your parentage can, in many cases, determine your nationality or national membership. • determination may not be complete because choice intervenes.

24. Parentage In an earlier lecture, we examined families and the husband-father role in human societies, observing that the latter role makes humans distinct from their most closely related primate relatives.

25. marriage Social recognition o D Social recognition filiation o D culture --------------------------------------------------------------------------- mating nature o -----> D giving birth o D

26. Filiation These role relationships depend upon social recognition by a broader group of people. Filiation = the relationship created by the social recognition of legitimate parentage. Filiation ties together the tracing backwards problem with the issue corporateness.

27. Bases of filiation Broader social acknowledgement: (1) that the relationship exists; (2) that it entails certain rights, duties, and expectations; and (3) that, therefore, it is a role relationship.

28. Bases of filiation • The relationship does not exist just in the minds or behaviors of the participants to the relationship. • It exists also in the minds and behaviors of others external to the relationship. • Those others maintain the position of overseers or keepers of the relationship, such that, if the rights, duties, or expectations are not complied with, external sanctions can be brought to bear.

30. How does filiation relate to corporate groups? By a rule (of descent) specifying that the group membership of one or both of the parents determines the group membership of the child. Bilateral descent group = where both parents determine membership in the group.

31. Unilineal descent group = where either the F or the M determines membership in the group, but not both: • a. Patrilineal descent group = where membership in the group is determined by the group membership of the F. Scottish clan. Naming in the U.S. has been patrilineal, though some shifts underway here in the last 30 years. • b. Matrilineal descent group = where membership in the group is determined by the group membership of the M. The Iroquois, whose kinship terminology we looked at earlier, had matrilineal descent groups.

32. O D D O O D D O O D D O O D D O O D D O Matrilineal descent group structure Patrilineal descent group structure

33. Are racial groupings based on descent or on phenotype? • the issue is complex in the contemporary U.S. • there are some ways in which race is treated as a descent group. - Some people who are phenotypically white but identify as black because of parentage. - Some people who are phenotypically black but identify as American Indian because of parentage.

34. Colin Powell as white? • The case of Colin Powell, our Secretary of State. Phenotypically black, but culturally indistinguishable from military-business elite, which is predominantly white. • Attempts to assimilate Powell into the white grouping by virtue of descent.

36. The role of racial groupings within the contemporary U.S. • Do racial groupings help to make the broader collectivity of America intelligible to individuals by simplifying the incredible complexity of the whole into a much smaller set of corporate persons (black, white, Hispanic)? • So much of news reporting seems to simplify the world in this way.

37. Are racial groupings corporate? Do individual Americans tend to hold the racial groupings responsible for the behavior of their individual members? • The NPR report by Patricia Elam on African-Americans and the Oscars tends to suggest as much.

38. Are racial and ethnic groupings corporate in the contemporary U.S.? We can find further evidence for this: (1) in racial stereotyping in police activity, (2) in the attribution of responsibility for crime to a racial grouping, (3) in hate crimes (4) in the claim that surfaces periodically throughout recent history that Jewish people are usurers, or (5) even in the suspicion that people of Italian descent must have ties to the Mafia.

39. The relationship between sex, marriage, and corporate groups • Races do not exist because phenotypic traits are clinally distributed (Prof. Mann); • Clinal distribution depends on the possibilities for sex and reproduction. • So what is the relationship between race, along with other corporate descent groups, and sexual relations?

40. Endogamy and Exogamy The descent group as we have defined it is neutral as to how a spouse is to be treated. Is the spouse a member of the descent group or not? Other rules determine this. Rules of marriage. Two, in particular, are relevant to descent group composition -- ENDOGAMY & EXOGAMY.

41. Endogamy and Exogamy • Endogamy = you must marry someone who is already a member of your (descent) group. You may not marry someone from a different group (Prof. Liberman). • Exogamy = you must marry someone who is NOT a member of your (descent) group. You may not marry someone who is a member of your descent group.

42. Until 1967, many U.S. states prohibited interracial marriage JUST three decades ago, Thurgood Marshall was only months away from appointment to the Supreme Court when he suffered an indignity that today seems not just outrageous but almost incomprehensible. He and his wife had found their dream house in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., but could not lawfully live together in that state: he was black and she was Asian. Fortunately for the Marshalls, in January 1967 the Supreme Court struck down the anti-interracial-marriage laws in Virginia and 18 other states. And in 1967 these laws were not mere leftover scraps from an extinct era. Two years before, at the crest of the civil-rights revolution, a Gallup poll found that 72 per cent of Southern whites and 42 per cent of Northern whites still wanted to ban interracial marriage. (From Steve Sailer, National Review, 1997).

43. Interracial marriage has increased dramatically since 1967 Between the 1960 and 1990 census, interracial marriages have increased dramatically: Black-white marriages: 4-fold increase Asian-white marriages: 10-fold increase

44. White men marrying Asian women; white women marrying black men

45. What about a rule of exogamy? Anthropologists hypothesize the early history of the human species was bound up not with endogamy, but rather with exogamy. Exogamy was the means by which human societies established larger-scale collectivities. They used sex (in the form of marriage) as way of inducing people to get along with one another.

46. What about a rule of exogamy? • We can’t go into marriage theory here, but generally where we find unilineal descent groups, we find that those groups are exogamous. • This produces crystalline structures, analogous to chemical bonds, holding society together. • No time for this here, but they are essential in the “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” class.

47. Conceptualizing the corporate groups as marriage partners Group A Group B

48. Contrast with endogamy and laws prohibiting intermarriage Group A Group B