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The relationships between individualism (I), nationalism (N), ethnocentrism (E) and authoritarianism (A) have been discussed amongst others in the political, philosophical and sociological literature. However, empirical analyses of their interdependencies are still scarce. That is why the main purpose of this thesis is to analyse empirically these interdependencies on the basis of the General Election Study for Belgium in 1991, 1995 and 1999.

Chapter 2 provides essential background information on Belgium, the country to which the case study relates. Belgium became an independent country in 1830. It is located in the mid-western part of the European continent; it consists of the three federal regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. The reforms of the 1970s and afterwards gradually transformed Belgium into a federal state, giving the majority of essential governmental powers to the three regions.

Each region is divided into provinces which in their turn are divided into municipalities. In Flanders, most of the people (known as Flemish) speak Dutch; in Wallonia, most of the people (known as Walloons) speak French. In Brussels, both French and Dutch are official languages. Along the eastern border, German is the official language of a small minority. There are also three cultural communities: the Flemish, the French and the German-speaking community. The communities have powers in areas where public services are highly dependent on language use, such as education, health and culture. The communities and regions each have their own Parliaments and their own Governments. Each region has a great deal of autonomy but frictions about language, ethnicity, and national identity between Flemings and Walloons continues to the present day, especially in the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde region.

The voting right in Belgium is a “one man, one vote” system: every Belgian national, male or female, who has reached the age of 18 has the right, and is obliged to cast one vote (unless this right has been suspended or the individual is ineligible) in the elections at the six different levels.

Today, there basically are no longer national parties in Belgium, except for some small unionist parties. All parties are homogeneous Flemish or Francophone and are present either in the Flemish or in the French-speaking constituencies, or else in the undivided bilingual electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. The Belgian multi-party system usually leads to a coalition government.

In a cross-sectional study, Billiet (1995) found a relationship between individualism and ethnocentrism among Flemish Roman Catholics while Meloen (1996) empirically addressed the issues of authoritarianism and modern political racism in a survey of 900 Flemish high school students. In a sample of adults, also administered in Flanders, Van Hiel and Mervielde (2005) found that right wing authoritarianism was positively related to prejudice. In a longitudinal study Billiet et al. (2005) found a moderate and rather constant across time correlation between nationalism and ethnocentrismin in Flanders. The author did not address the question whether nationalism leads to ethnocentrism, ethnocentrism to nationalism, or both effects operate simultaneously in a reciprocal causal relationship.

The background and rationale of the above studies was the voting behavior in Flanders, particularly the support for the extreme right-wing party Vlaams Blok (Fraeys, 2004). Nationalism, authoritarianism, and political protests are all supposed to play an important role in the support for the Vlaams Blok. The main problem in the ideology of the Vlaams Blok is the choice for an ethnic national state, where the ‘state’ is understood as an ‘ethnic community which is biologically determined’ (De Witte & Klandermans, 2000). The Vlaams Blok has been convicted for racism by a Belgian court in 2004.

The present study is inspired by, and extends, the research on the development of political ideologies in Flanders. Particularly, it presents longitudinal analyses of the relationships between individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism and authoritarianism.

Chapter 3 presents the conceptual model of interdependencies between the four key concepts of individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and authoritarianism on the basis of a literature review. I define the notions of individualism, ethnocentrsim, nationalism and authoritarianism as follows:

Individualism: the pursuit of personal happiness. According to this political ideology the core task of a community or state is to foster the rights, and improve the development, of individuals and to assure their freedom. Community and state are seen as devices to individuals to achieve those objectives. The community exists for the sake of its individual members. Individualism implies that the government should not unduly intervene in individuals’ lives. Instead, it should guarantee that individuals do not harm each others’ interests.

Ethnocentrism: a belief in the superiority of one’s own group and a corresponding disdain for other groups. Ethnocentrism implies a strong distinction between “ingroups” (groups with which the individual identifies him or herself), and “outgroups” (typically minority groups, toward which he or she has no sense of belonging or which are perceived as antithetical to the ingroup).

Nationalism: an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. As an ideology, nationalism holds that ‘the people’ are the nation, and, that as a result, only nation-states founded on the principle of national self-determination are legitimate. In many cases nationalist pursuit of self-determination has caused conflict between people and states including war (both external and domestic), secession; and in extreme cases, genocide.

Authoritarianism: a political philosophy that negates democracy and an ideology that accepts a political system that is not based on the consent of the governed but on the will of the rulers. Moreover, it accepts a monopoly of power, and discussion and voting are replaced by the decisions of leaders.

The postulated relationships among the above concepts are depicted in Figure 7.1. Specifically, the hypotheses are:

Individualism has a negative effect on authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism has a positive effect on ethnocentrism.

Nationalism has a positive effect on authoritarianism.

Individualism has a negative impact on nationalism.

Ethnocentrism has a positive impact on nationalism.

Figure 7.1. The postulated recursive structure between latent state variables

7.3 Methodology and data set

In this section, I explain why I have used continuous time modeling (CT) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate the parameters of the CT model. At the end of the section I describe the data set.

Most studies of the interdependencies among individualism, nationalism, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism (or of a subset of these variables) are cross-sectional, e.g. Billiet et al (2005), Fraeys (2004), Spruyt (1995) and Billiet (1995). However, cross-sectional research has a disadvantage in that there is no control over the autoregression effects and the directions of cross-effects between the variables are difficult to assess. Longitudinal research based on repeated measurements of the same variables at different points in time make it possible to reduce or overcome these problems.

The arguments for continuous time modeling have been summarized by amongst others Bergstrom (1988). The rationale of continuous time modeling is that a social or political system does not only function at quarterly or annual observation points in time, but also during intermediate intervals. Hence, the model should also relate to the intermediate intervals. Gandolfo (1993) added that the results of a model should not depend on the length of the observation interval and must remain the same when the interval is doubled or halved. If the results should not depend on the period length, he concluded, they should remain valid when this length tends to zero (that is, when one switches over from discrete to continuous time analysis). According to Oud (2007), the most compelling reason for analyzing cross-effects in continuous time is that equal effects found in discrete time do not guarantee at all that the underlying continuous time effects are equal. Particularly, equality at a single point in time may be consistent with quite different cross-lagged effect functions across time. For example, the cross-lagged effect functions of a pair of reciprocal effects, say indivdualism on ethnocentrism and vice versa, although having equal values at one specific point in time, may have quite different forms and maxima across time.

Continuous time models are estimated on the basis of observations in discrete time (in this study the General Election Studies in 1991,1995 and 1999). Estimation requires a tool that links the discrete observations to the continuous time model. One possible tool is the approximate discrete model (ADM). An advantage of the ADM is that it utilizes only simple linear restrictions to approximate the differential equation model and allows estimation by means less nonlinearly oriented SEM programs like LISREL.

An alternative to the ADM is the Exact Discrete Model (EDM). The EDM links in an exact way the discrete time model parameters to the underlying continuous time model parameters by means of nonlinear restrictions (Bergstrom, 1988),. Oud and Jansen (2000) showed how the nonlinear SEM program Mx (Neale, et al., 1999) can be employed for maximum likelihood estimation of the continuous time state space model parameters. Oud and Jansen (2000) also generalized the EDM to cover not only time-invariant parameters, but also the parameters that vary continuously over time according to a general polynomial scheme.

The data set in this thesis is obtained from the General Election Study for Belgium in 1991, 1995 and 1999. The data set contains two types of respondents, Flemish respondents and Dutch speaking respondents of the Brussels-Capital Region. The sample was selected as a two stage sample with equal probabilities of the secondary units. The total sample size avaiable for all three waves is 1274. The geographical distribution of the respondents is given in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1 Geographical distribution of panel respondents in Flanders and Brussels

interviewed in 1991, 1995 and 1999

Province
Respondents

Antwerp

331

Flemish Brabant

187

Limburg

187

East Flanders

311

West Flanders

223

Brussels

35

Total

1274

(Source: Interuniversitair Steunpunt Politieke-Opinieonderzoek K.U. Leuven, General Election Study 1991, 1995 and 1999)

7.4 The main empirical results

The first empirical chapter 4 Measuring authoritarianism with different sets of items in a longitudinal study deals with measurement of authoritarianism. As defined in chapter 3, authoritarianism is a form of social behavior characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization and adherence to enforcing and maintaining control through the use of oppressive measures. It refers to a complex of nine sub-syndromes (Adorno et al., 1950), of which conventionalism (strict adherence to conventional values), aggression and submission are the most important (Meloen, 1991).

The sets of items in the data set at the three time points (1991, 1995 and 1999) were not the same. In total 12 different items were used over the three waves. The purpose of chapter 4 was the identification of the items that consistently and adequately measure authoritarianism over time. The items 1 and 2 are the core items and were used in all threee waves (1991 C 1995 C 1999). These items are: “Obedience and respect for authority are the two most important virtues children have to learn”, and “Most of our social problems could be solved, if we could somehow get rid of the immoral, crooked people”. Items 3-6 and item 9 were used only twice (in 1991 C 1995 and in 1995 C 1999, respectively); the remaining five items only once (in 1991 or 1999).

I applied the congeneric measurement model by Joreskog (1971, 1974). Congenericness between items means that their underlying latent variables have a correlation coefficient approximately equal to 1 and thus can be considered to measure the same underlying phenomenon. I found that Joreskog’s model performed well. The main empirical result was that the core items measure authoritarianism well in all three waves

The second empirical chapter 5 is Assessing the relationships between nationalism, ethnocentrism, and individualism in Flanders using Bergstrom’s approximate discrete model. The reciprocal relationships between the three concepts individualism nationalism, and ethnocentrism was analyzed by a cross-lagged panel model. I hypothesized strong autoregressions for individualism, nationalism and ethnocentrism and, on the basis of the theoretical considerations in Billiet (1995) and Billiet et al. (2005) and the conceptual model presented above, the following causal cross-lagged structure:

A negative impact of individualism and a positive impact of nationalism on ethnocentrism

A negative impact of individualism on nationalism.

The recursive cross-lagged structure is summarized in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2 The recursive cross-lagged structure among individualism, nationalism and ethnocentrism

As a starting point I did not hypothesize reciprocal cross-lagged effects between the variables.

Individualism was measured by five items with 5-point-scales; ethnocentrism by eight items with 5-point-scales, and the third latent variable, nationalism, was measured by four items in a somewhat more complicated fashion.

Estimation was done by means of the LISREL program by estimating the approximate discrete model (ADM), from which the exact discrete model (EDM) was derived and used in subsequent computations. For the measurement model, all loadings turned out to be highly significant, indicating that every item contributes to the latent variable. Moreover, the reliabilities as measured by R2 ranged from 0.230 to 0.670.

The autoregressive effects for all three variables turned out to be rather strong, as hypothesized.

Regarding cross-effects, there are substantial differences between Figures 7.2 and 7.3, particularly:

The hypothesized negative relationships from individualism on nationalism and ethnocemtrism turned out to be positive. A possible explanation is that by changes in society individualism got a less liberal character and developed into a more nationalistic and ethnocentric direction.

There is a reciprocal relationship between individualism and ethnocentrism whereas we hypothesized a unidirectional relationship from individualism to ethnocentrism. A possible explanation is that the growing ethnocentrism in the society of Flanders stimulated the less liberal kind of individualism mentioned above.

Figure 7.3 The estimated relationships between individualism, ethnocentrism, and nationalism

Furthermore, both individualism and ethnocentrism have small effects on nationalism. Nationalism was found to be dependent only with no significant effect on the two other latent variables.

Standardized cross-lagged effect functions (unit-impulse responses) revealed the maximum impact of individualism on ethnocentrism (0.235) to occur after 17 years and the effect in the opposite direction (0.190) after 16.4 years. The smaller maximum impacts of individualism on nationalism (0.105) and ethnocentrism (0.099) are expected to occur later, after 22 and 23.2 years, respectively.

Chapter 6 The relationships between individualism, nationalism,

ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism in Flanders by means of

the continuous time EDM/SEM model extends the analysis presented in Chapter 5 to all four key variables presented in the conceptual model. The EDM/SEM is estimated by the Mx program with all four concepts handled as latent state variables that influence each other continuously across time. Although nationalism, ethnocentrism, individualism, and authoritarianism in Flanders have been the subject of several studies before, a longitudinal analysis has not been performed on all four concepts simultaneously nor have their relationships and the direction of their relationships been studied in continuous time.

Figure 7.4 The hypothesized relationships between individualism, nationalism, ethocentrism and authoritarianism

The basic hypotheses in Figure 7.4 are:

Individualism has a negative effect on authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism has a positive effect on ethnocentrism.

Nationalism has a positive effect on authoritarianism.

One important result of the chapter is that the SEM model is identified with three time points.

The estimated measurement model showed that the latent variables are well measured. The structural model is presented in Figure 7.5:

I

Individualism

A

Authoritarianism

0,0319

(0,0065)

0,0357

(0,0093)

0,0386

(0,0062)

E

Ethnocentrism

N

Nationalism

Figure 7.5 The estimated relationships between nationalism, individualism, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism

As in chapter 5, we find substantial differences the hypothesized model (7.4) and the empirical findings (7.5). Particularly:

Nationalism is an “isolated” variable in that it neither has an impact on any of the other variables in the model nor is impacted by any of them. This is a consequence of the introduction in the model of the fourth concept authoritarianism. Apparently, authoritarianism is the the key variable in the model. It impacts on individualism and ethnocentrism and, in its turn, is impacted by ethnocentrism. In the present-day Flemish context, the traditional notions of nationalism, individualism, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism and their relationships do no longer apply. Tradtional nationalism does not fit into this model any longer

In the conceptual model we specified a relationship from authoritarianism to

ethnocentrism. The empirical results confirm this relationship but also reveal an even stronger relationship from

ethnocentrism to authoritarianism. Apparently, ethnocentrism is the key driver in the model .

7.5 Reflections on the methodology and the implications of the empirical results

The empirical analysis has dealt with four latent variables, each measured by different sets of indicators. For one variable, authoritarianism, I used Joreskog’s (1971, 1974) congeneric model to identify the indicators that measure this variable consistently over time. I found that this model performs well to test whether or not different items used in a longitudinal analysis can be used to measure the same underlying latent variable.

The next important methodological result is that continuous time modeling is appropriate to analyze the development of the interdependencies among individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism and authoritarianism over time. Continuous time makes it possible to fill the gaps between the discrete time points and evaluates the auto-effects and cross-effects of the variables for intermediate time intervals. It thus allows comparing effects for unequal time intervals between waves, obtained in the same study or in different studies. The reason is that the autoregressions as well as the cross-effects do not depend on the time interval used . In particular, in a stable model autoregression goes down for an increasing time interval, while cross-effects first increase and next go down (Oud, 2002).

A third methodological finding is that a model with four latent variables observed at three points in time is identified.

A fourth major methodological finding relates to the performance of structural equation modeling (SEM). A SEM is made up of two submodels: a measurement model where the relations between the observed and the latent variables are specified and estimated; and a structural model that presents the relationships among the latent variables. In SEM, we can use cross-sectional and longitudinal data. The present study has shown the advantages of SEM in longitudinal analysis, particularly adequate estimation of autoregressions and of cross-lagged effects controlling for autoregressions.

The main result as regards content is that we have gained more insight into the relationships among individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism and authoritarianism. Particularly:

Compared to Billiet (1995), a major achievement of this thesis is the finding of a reciprocal relationship between the authoritarianism and ethnocentrism and not just a one-way relationship. This is due to the fact that we used a longitudinal analysis while Billiet only used a cross-sectional analysis..

Regarding the relationship between individualism and authoritarianism, in this study we found a positive impact from authoritarianism to individualism instead of a negative effect from individualism to authoritarianism, as hypothesized on the basis of theory. In line with Billiet, et al (1996), we observe that the traditional hypothesis of a negative effect from individualism to authoritarianism does not fit anymore the present Flanders situation where many guestworkers are seen as a threat to the lower class and the bad economic situation in Wallonia is considered a threat for the people in Flanders who are worried that a substantial amount of social security goes to Wallonia. These developments have created a kind of individualistic selfishness which is not captured by the traditional theory of individualism. In this regard it would be interesting to analyze the relationship between individualism and authoritarianism by social class, as the perceptions of the future of social security may differ by social class.

Regarding the relationship between authoritarianism and ethnocentrism, we did not expect a reciprocal relationship. Our original hypothesis is confirmed but there is also another relationship: from ethnocentrism to authoritarianism. In the original grand theory by Adorno, et al (1950), there was the hypothesis that authoritarianism as character structure was the “mother” of many attitude configurations as for example anti-jewishm, ethnocentrism, conservative thingking about the economy and labour relation. In present-day Flandres it is ethnocentrism that drives, and in its turn is driven by authoritarianism.

Regarding nationalism and authoritarianism, the empirical results showed no

relationship between both variables while we postulated that nationalism has a positive effect on authoritarianism. Apparently, the notions of nationalism and authoritarianism are less closely linked in present-day Flandres than hypothesized in traditional theory.

The following policy recommendations can be derived from the empirical results:

The results can be used in educational and information programs. Specifically, when adressing the issue of ethnocentrism it is important to consider the entire complex of relationships in which it is embedded rather than considering it in isolation. So if a program aimed at the reduction ethnocentrism is entertained, individualism (in the sense of egocentrism) and authoritarianism need to be considered as well.

The positive relationship between individualism and ethnocentrism found in chapter 5 should be taken into account in the context of privatization programs which have taken place in Europe and elsewhere. Privatization and the accompanying philosophy of individualism may undermine the sense of Gemeinschaft which may lead to ethnocentrism and ultimately to racism. Of course, further research on this issue is needed

In the context of unemployment policies and reform of social security the wider political impacts on ethnocentrism and authoritarianism should be taken into account. For instance, a reduction of unemployment may go together with less ethnocentrism.

7.6 Some suggestions for further research

In this study I used maximum likelihood (ML) to estimate the parameters. However, because some degree of nonnormality was found in the data, instead of ML alternative estimators like weighted least squares (WLS) or diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) procedures should be tested.

In this study I have applied the ADM/SEM and EDM/SEM procedures. However, there are two alternatives to solve the continuous time estimation problem. One alternative is the linear stochastic differential equation approach (LSDE) (Singer, 1991) The LSDE approach involves repeated calculation of the latent state vector for all subjects whereas in the EDM-Mx procedure, the latent state vector is derived on the basis of the loglikelihood function. It seems worthwhile to compare these different approachs in terms of estimation results. Another alternative is the multivariate latent differential equation (MLDE) (Boker et al.,2004). The degree of similarity between ADM/SEM and MLDE is dependent on the actual time interval between measurements. An interesting question is how similar the results are for intervals as in the present study.

Extension of the four variables model to include racism. As described above, ethnocentrism is a very broad variable and in the extreme it goes to racism. By extending the model the similarities and differences between ethnocentrism and ethnocentrism can be identified as well as their relationships to the other variables in the model.

This study is based on three waves. When new waves become available, it is worthwhile expanding the analysis by adding the new observations (e.g for the years 2004 and 2009). If we have more time point, then the precision of the analysis can be increased.

Reconsideration of the notions of individualism, nationalism, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism and their dependencies in the light of the empirical findings for Flanders. In this context it is also important to consider disaggregation of the analysis by social class. It could be that the relationships between variables are different for different classes and, moreover, that they vary over time.

Social class is one of the oldest and most persistent inequalities in British society. In the past, people were very aware of their social class and their expected roles and responsibilities. People would have worn different clothes, behaved in different ways and had a very different culture from each other and they would have accepted this as a perfectly normal element of behaviour.

We are still aware today of some of the cultural differences between the social classes so that rich people and poorer people have different accents, are educated differently and wear different styles of clothes from each other. These cultural differences that separate the classes are known as indicators of class. In the past, many people also believed that people of the highest social classes were better than other people and should be respected because of their social position. This idea is known as deference.

People nowadays are less willing to admit that social class is important. Poorer people may imitate the styles and behaviour of wealthy people by buying copies of their expensive clothes in cheaper shops or buying replicas and fakes. However, rich people often copy the ‘street style’ of the working class people and their fashions.

The differences between the classes seem to be blurred to such an extent that many people would not define their social class in the same way that sociologists might. Sociologists mostly believe that despite the way that people reject the idea of social classes, it is still important in our society. We are just less aware of it than people were in the past. It affects our life chances and our life styles, with high earning people enjoying a superior standard of living and better life chances than those from more deprived backgrounds.

Subjective class can be measured by attitudes, beliefs and political opinions. This generally consists of the vague notions upper, middle and working class and most people would identify themselves as belonging to one of these groups. This type of description does not explain the full range of differences between these groups. People may be middle class and have access to huge wealth, whereas others have the education, lifestyle and manners of the middle class but are relatively poor. Equally, people from a working class background who achieve very good professional jobs may well still feel themselves to be working class. In contrast, sociologists are concerned with objective class. This refers to our occupations, education, possessions and our wealth. It can be measured in the data put out by the Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys such as mortality lists.

Sociologists have had limited success in attempts to measure social class objectively. There are two generally used scales of social class, though a very wide number have been devised by sociologists in the past. The Registrar General’s Index of Social Class was used by government statisticians till 2001, and is still widely used as a rough indicator of people’s background. It uses occupation as the basis of differentiation. People are placed in a five point scale. This is still used by advertisers and manufacturers who target products to certain markets. There are weaknesses with this class indicator because it does not take into account people’s income or their job security. In addition, women take their class from their male relatives. Most people are in class C or class 3. Since 2001, the class structure has been amended to take into account employment conditions including: job security, promotion opportunity and the ability and opportunity to work on their own and make own decisions about tasks. This new scale is known as the NS-SEC.

Goldblatt suggested alternative measures of class including home ownership, access to a car and educational status and he has shown that all of these can be correlated to inequalities in health. One of the most recent attempts to define the class system in a new and radical way was by Will Hutton (18995). Hutton is a critic of the New Right. He argues that social inequality, in the form of low wages, low skill and high unemployment, has resulted in a clearly divided and economically unstable society. Hutton has put forward the 30-30-40 thesis to show the three-way split in contemporary British class relations. He says our society can now be seen to consist of: 30% – unemployed, low paid, insecure work; 30% with some job security and quality of life; 40% – privileged workers in secure and regular employment.

In addition, the nature of work which is a traditional measure of a person’s class position is changing so the debates have become complex and theoretical. Certainly, inequality is an important social dynamic, but there is a question mark over whether this is related to social class or whether people even recognise class as significant in their lives. Marxists argue strongly that it is but that people do not recognise it for reasons related to deskilling and proletarianisation; feminists suggest other dynamics influence inequality and post-modernists suggest that the important dynamic is not class but the ability to spend money.

What is the link between class and occupation?

Traditionally class has been linked to the type of work a person does. The debate as to the nature of class has therefore become more complex as the nature of work has changed. The upper classes are able to live off unearned income such as rents from land or property. There are so few of the upper classes that they are more or less invisible to sociologists. Very little research has been done on these people. Upper class people usually keep themselves to themselves and are not willing to participate in studies.

Recent work by Adonis and Pollard (1998) stresses the significance of the upper class in modern British society and they consider that there is an emerging ‘superclass’ that consist of an elite of extremely high paid managers and professionals. According to Adonis and Pollard, this new superclass is linked financially to the City of London, a male and upper class world that has many links with the traditions and heritage of public school and Oxbridge elites of the past. This superclass emerged from the financial changes of the 1980s and is composed of people who benefited from low taxation and privatisation of industry to become significant in international trading with global companies. They earn multi-million salaries and have large financial bonus packages. Papers tend to refer to them as Fat Cats.

The middle classes live off professional work such as law, medicine or the ownership of a business. Generally they earn more and have better working conditions than the working class. Working class people work with their hands as tradesmen or labourers. Work with the hands is known as manual work. We still call professional people who sell knowledge rather than skills, non-manual workers. This is the basic social class division in society – between manual and non-manual work.

Middle class work requires educational qualifications and skills. Most people who are members of the middle classes will have been to university and gained higher level professional qualifications as well. Generally, middle class professional work is well paid or has good conditions and terms of service. In the past, there would have been quite serious differences in pay between professional workers and manual workers though these differences have been eroded.

C Wright Mills (1956) and others have seen the middle classes as divided into two groups. The higher professions have the potential for high earnings and who are self-employed or employed by large corporations. These are people such as judges, accountants, lawyers, dentists, doctors. These people tend to control entry into their occupations. The lower professions are often, though not exclusively, feminised and work in the public sector. They have limited access to high earnings and include teachers, nurses, and social workers.

The lower middle classes have become more like the working class according to the Marxist, Braverman (1974) who points out that many of the professions, such as architects, have become vulnerable to redundancies. He also claims that skills are being lost (de-skilling) because mechanisation means that individuals are now being taken over by technology. People are no longer required to undertake tasks that traditionally required talent. Tradesmen have lost their skills to machines, and architects’ plans can be created by computer programmes. Others, such as teachers or opticians who are unable to control entry into their professions are no longer able to claim high rates of pay as there is always demand for work and people who are willing to accept low rates in return for employment. Oppenheimer (1973) has also suggested that the middle classes have lost power and authority in work.

Working class work may require high levels of skill and effort: however, because it is manual work, it is not generally well paid and often is of relatively low status. In addition, although years of on-the-job training may be involved in such work, people will not have been to university or college. Hairdressing, for example, is one of the worst paid occupations on average. Unskilled work is very low value, low status work and there are few openings for people who have no educational qualifications. Work which once was done by people is now done by one person with a qualification who operates a machine. In the 1930s, digging was done by teams of men with shovels. We would be surprised to see people do work of this kind today. Even much check-out work is now done by machine alone.

In the 197Os, it was commonly believed by many commentators that the working class were becoming more middle class as their incomes were higher than previously earned by the working class. This theory was known as the affluent worker thesis or embourgeoisement and was supported by Galbraith. This theory was disproved by Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechofer and Platt (1968) who conducted detailed research on car workers in Dagenham. They found that that the workers worked longer hours and had different attitudes to work from middle class management. Fiona Devine (1992) repeated the work and found that redundancy and unemployment were a real concern for working class families. The gap between professional work and working class work was widening.

Another debate has opened up in terms of occupation and class in the last thirty years. Unemployment and benefit dependency has become more common in British society. This has led to the development of a significant underclass of people who have never earned their own money. In the early 1970s, the term was used sympathetically by Giddens and other members of the developing New Left (1973) to describe those who faced massive deprivation and social inequality with working conditions and income levels below even those of the working class. At the same time, other social commentators from the New Right were using the term underclass negatively to describe a class of people who have little self-sufficiency but rely on social security benefits to survive. The term ‘dole scrounger’ was widely used in the press to describe those who lived on benefit.

What is the relationship between work, class and income?

There is a common belief that those who earn more money have worked harder for it. In reality, the low paid are often extremely hard working but unable to gain an acceptable income from the work that they do. One of the reasons is to do with the changing nature of the work that is available.

The structure of the British economy has undergone radical change since the end of World War 2. There has been a massive move away from employment in primary industries such as agriculture and coal mining. Manufacturing or secondary industry has also experienced a drop in employment. There has been a reduction in traditionally male heavy industry and a growth in light industry and assembly work that can be automated and which employs more females. The real growth sector in the economy has been in service sector jobs. Many of these are middle class jobs in management and training; however, more are jobs which offer long hours, low pay and casual part time work in restaurants and pubs.

Ivan Turak (2000) points out that the actual number of manual jobs fell by 11% between 1981 and 1991 while non-manual jobs have expanded. Certain sectors of the workforce have been more vulnerable to unemployment, and he points to the older male manual worker as being particularly vulnerable. Paul Gregg (1994) has claimed that one of the main causes of poverty in Britain is unemployment and that the UK had a third more families out of work than other developed countries. Statistics suggest that in a fifth of households, there is no adult in employment and although in the rest of Europe, 80% of single parents work, in Britain the figure is closer to 40% of single parents in work.

Figures based on social class alone are difficult to access, as emphasis is placed on other forms of inequality in official data. However, there is a clear link between a person’s social class and the opportunities or life chances that they may experience. As Wilkinson (1996) identified, people at the bottom of the stratification system in the UK have severely reduced life chances:

“In Britain people in the poorest areas have death rates that are – age for age – four times as high as people in the richest areas. Among Whitehall civil servants, junior staff were found to have death rates three times as high as the most senior administrators working in the same offices.”

In 1994, it was established that 2.2 million workers in the UK earned less than 68% of the average gross weekly wage that stood at less than A?6.00 per hour in that year. These low paid workers tended to be female, the young, the disabled, single parents and members of ethnic minorities. Their work was part-time, homework or casual labour and they tended to be found in certain areas, and in smaller firms.

After much pressure on government, National Minimum Wage legislation was introduced by the Labour government with effect from April 1999. It is currently set at A?5.73 (2009). Employers’ organisations had predicted a massive increase in unemployment following the introduction of a minimum wage, but this did not occur. Even so, people still resort to desperate measures to obtain satisfactory income. Evidence presented to the Low Pay Commission by the Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit (2000) described one woman who had taken on three low paid jobs at one time in order to ‘make ends meet’. Wadsworth (2007) suggests that around 10% of British households rely on minimum wage income. He also points out that many minimum wage earners take a second job to supplement income. Bryan and Taylor (2006) suggest that those who earn National Minimum Wage (NMW) tend to stay in NMW work jobs when they change employment. In addition, low pay workers spend time out of work. More than 80% of NMW workers are female, and many are over the age of 50. Most of these workers had no qualifications. There is also some evidence that employers can evade minimum wage legislation through a variety of semi-legal tactics and pay their workers less than they are entitled to. Migrants are very vulnerable to this kind of abuse.

We are clearly a long way from Tony Blair’s claim in 1999 ‘we are all middle class’. Where class convergence has been greatest it has been at the margins of the classes with a blurred area between the upper working class and lower middle class. The term embourgeoisement is less discussed than it used to be, but Goldthorpe et al’s conclusion that the working class has fragmented into a new and traditional working class commands general support to this day. Another factor worth remembering when considering the embourgeoisement debate is what is happening at the other end of the working class. At the bottom of society many see an impoverished underclass of those living on the minimum wage or in receipt of long-term welfare. This impoverished group has seen their living standards deteriorate relative to the rest of society.

How does social class affect educational attainment?

As the ESRC point out, British sociologists all tend to agree that qualifications are the best predictor of whether a child will gain a high earning middle-class job. However they also point out that there are unequal success rates between social classes at school and unequal entry and success rates in post-compulsory education.

Government data reveals significant differences between the educational attainments of the differing social classes. In 2008, 35% of the working class pupils obtained five or more good-grade GCSEs, compared with 63 per cent of children from middle class families. While the proportion of poorer children getting degrees has risen by just 3 per cent, the increase among those from wealthier backgrounds is 26 per cent. The reasons for the development of this pattern are complex. It could be to do with home or schools, or it could be related to cultural or material deprivation. Sociologists, Bynner and Joshi (2002) used longitudinal birth cohort data and discovered that the link between class and educational underattainment is clear and years of government policy have had little impact on this inequality.

In 1999, West et al found that there was a 66% correlation between free school meals and low school attainment. Levacic and Hardman in 1999 also pointed out the relationship between free school meals and poor GCSE grades. O’Keefe found that there was a measurable relationship between free school meals and higher levels of truancy. Jefferis (2002) found an unarguable link between class and attainment. She studied nearly 11,000 children born from March 3 to 9, 1958. Maths, reading and other ability tests measured the educational attainment of the children at ages seven, 11 and 16. At the age of 33 their highest educational achievement was recorded. Her research team found the gap in educational attainment between children of higher and lower social classes widened as time went on – it was greatest by the age of 33.

At university level, social class inequalities still have an effect. Wakeling suggested in 2002 that a lower class degree and rich parents are more likely to lead to a student taking up post-graduate studies than the highest level university degrees and a modest background. Boliver (2006) found that only 35% of candidates from semi/unskilled manual class origins applied to a Russell Group university (one of the top 100 universities in the UK), in contrast to 65% of those from professional backgrounds. Machin and Vignoles (2005) conducted research on links between higher education and family background, focusing particularly on the experiences of two cohorts of individuals born in 1958 and 1970. They claim that links between educational achievement and parental income / social class strengthened during this period.

The Social Mobility Commission, reporting in 2009, found that social class accounts for much of the gap in attainment between higher and lower achievers. They reported that the gap widens as children get older. In addition, it was claimed that increased spending on education has favoured the middle classes. In other words division between the social classes is widening.

What is the relationship between social class, criminality and inequality in the UK?

Maguire points out that the prison population tends to consist of young, male, poorly educated people who are likely to have experienced difficult or deprived childhoods and many of whom come from ethnic minority or mixed ethnic backgrounds. In 1992, 40 % of male prisoners had left school before the age of sixteen. People from lower social class backgrounds are significantly more likely to appear in victim and conviction statistics than people from wealthier backgrounds and it is a matter of argument as to whether they commit more crime, or they are more likely to be convicted if they do commit crimes.

In the past, much analysis of criminal behaviour worked on the false assumptions that crime statistics were an accurate representation of crime and that conviction rates gave a fair representation of criminal behaviour. Self report studies show that the majority of the population have broken the law and that middle class crimes can often be very serious indeed. For example, Murphy et al (1990) showed that football hooliganism is not limited to the working classes and Pearson (1987) found that drug offences occur in all social classes. White collar crime and corporate offences receive very little attention from the news media in comparison with youth crime such as knife crime. Levi (1993) pointed out that official statistics do not include tax fraud cases as these are rarely prosecuted by the police or followed up by the criminal justice system. Snider points out that capitalist states are unwilling to pass laws that regulate business or challenge the rights of the rich to make money. Karstedt (2004) estimates that middle class crimes such as car tax avoidance, tax fraud and damaging items once worn in order to return them to shops may cost the UK something in the region of A?14 billion each year. Braithwaite, as early as 1979, concluded that working class children and adults commit the types of crime that are targeted by the police and do so at higher rates than middle class people.

There is also research evidence to show that some forms of crime are linked to poverty and deprivation. Gang crime is especially prevalent in areas of deprivation where there are fewer opportunities for work. Brodie et al (2000) and Hope and Shaw (1988) found disadvantaged communities to be vulnerable to youth crime. It is estimated that 40% of crime takes place in about 10% of local authority areas. Stratesky (2004) links this phenomenon to the concentration of power and social exclusion in post industrial communities. Willott and Griffin (1999) found that working class men in prison justified their criminal behaviour by claiming that they were supporting their families. Furthermore, because they were effectively excluded from society, they could not then be expected to follow its rules. It could be argued that these accounts are self- serving because the victims of crime are often the very weakest in the community. Living in a poor and deprived community is also to live at risk of being a victim of crimes such as car theft, vandalism, anti-social behaviour, burglary and violence. Hughes et al (2002) suggest that more than half of victims of crime have already previously been victimised. This acts as evidence that some types of crime are more likely to be associated with working class status than others, particularly crimes against property and the person.

Are there class inequalities in the experience of health?

The over-arching factor affecting health inequality in the UK is social class. Study after study shows that people born in poor families are low birth weight, are more likely to die as babies, grow up with poor health, are vulnerable to disabling disease and impaired development and they die early. Their children will experience poor life chances so health inequality runs in families. Some of these health inequalities are due to patterns of poor life style so that obesity and smoking related illnesses are also diseases of poverty and deprivation. Children born in poverty and deprivation are also vulnerable to high risk behaviour such as drug abuse, binge drinking and sexual transmission of disease. Furthermore, in 2002, the Office for National Statistics said that inequalities of health and life expectancy between social classes were widening.

Spicker points out that figures from the UK show that people in lower social classes, including children, are more likely to suffer from infective and parasitic diseases, pneumonia, poisonings or violence. Adults in lower social classes are more likely to suffer from cancer, heart disease and respiratory disease. He also underlines the point that there are inequalities in access to health care according to social class, so that the poorest people live in areas with fewer doctors, more difficult access to major hospitals and poorer services. Wheeler et al, working on 2001 Census data also found that areas with the highest levels of poor health tend to have the lowest numbers of doctors and other health professionals (other than nurses). They also discovered that areas with high levels of poor health tend also to have high numbers of their population providing informal care for family and friends. There is lower take-up of preventative medicine such as vaccination and routine screening for disabling conditions among working class people. This called the inverse care law.

Discounting theories that suggest the working class are genetically weaker, then the unavoidable conclusion is that poverty leads to ill health through poor nutrition, housing and environment. This is exacerbated through cultural differences in the diet and fitness of different social classes, and in certain habits like smoking. Tim Spector (2006), an epidemiologist found that social class has an impact on how the body ages, irrespective of diet and bad habits. In a study of 1,500 women, he discovered that there is a link between class and poor health. He claims that the cause is that people from lower social backgrounds are more likely to feel insecure, especially at work, and suffer low self-esteem and a sense of lacking control over their lives. He claims that the stress this causes creates damage at a cellular level that accelerates ageing. Support for this theory can be found in the fact that studies consistently show that people from lower social classes experience higher levels of mental ill-health, with particularly high rates of depression and anxiety. There is additional health risk from many working class jobs. Males in manual jobs are more than twice as likely to get occupational lung cancer. Bladder cancer is also work-related, associated with work in industrial settings. For nearly all conditions the risk of heart disease, cancer, stain injury and stress is higher for those in working class occupations rather than managerial jobs in the same industry.

Class change and sociological theory

Social class is undoubtedly changing significantly and this has prompted a number of debates as to the meanings of these changes and the impact that they have on class. Marxists have a problem because Marx suggested that people would develop a class consciousness and overthrow capitalism. Clearly, this has not happened, in fact people are less aware of class as a social dynamic. There are different explanations for this.

What is proletarianisation?

Proletarianisation is a Marxist concept that sees the middle-class as identifying increasingly with working-class identity. Applied research has focused upon using case studies to examine whether non-manual work is becoming increasingly similar to manual work. Neo-Marxists like Erik Wright or Harry Braverman claim that proletarianisation is progressing at a reasonable pace. In contrast, neo-Weberians like David Lockwood and John Goldthorpe have always vigorously argued against it. One reason for this conflict of views is that different meanings of proletarianisation are adopted in order to measure it.

Neo-Marxists such as Wright and Braverman argue that routine white-collar workers are no longer middle class. They consequently see such jobs and even some ‘professions’, such as nursing and teaching, as particularly prone to proletarianisation. Braverman argues that deskilling in the workplace affects both manual and non-manual work, causing him to argue that routine white-collar workers have joined the mass of unskilled employees. As such they are part of the working class, they are ‘proletarianised’. Braverman argues that deskilling and the loss of the social and economic advantages non-manual jobs enjoyed over manual work, are the key factors behind the growth of proletarianisation. In addition, many workers have lost the control and autonomy they enjoyed 20 years or so in the workplace. A good example is the university lecturers Wright cited as example of ‘semi-autonomous workers’ in a contradictory class location. Many university lecturers are very poorly paid and on short term contracts. Many earn less than primary school teachers. In addition they are subject to performance scrutiny and time monitoring. Many professionals in education are now subject to clocking in and out like factory workers.

It has been argued by some feminists, such as Rosemary Crompton, that women are more prone to proletarianisation than men, in the sense that they experience poorer promotional opportunities. In examining the work of clerks (Crompton and Jones) they found that only a low level of skill was required and that computerisation seemed to accentuate proletarianisation. However, Marshall et al have challenged the idea of proletarianisation. They found both male and female routine white collar workers reported greater levels of autonomy than those in the working class. They found that it was mainly manual workers who felt their work had been deskilled. In contrast, the perceptions of over 90 per cent of male and female non-manual workers were that neither skill levels nor autonomy had significantly diminished. However, they did find that personal service workers such as receptionists, check-out operators and shop assistants lacked a sense of autonomy in a manner similar to the working class. Since this group is composed primarily of female workers, this supports the idea that women are more prone to proletarianisation.

Recent research by Clark and Hoffman-Martinot (1998) has highlighted a growing number of casual or routine workers who spend their working day in front of a VDU and/or on the telephone.

Marxists would see such workers, especially those is call centres as working class despite the ‘white-collar’ working environment. They would see the low morale and general worker discontent as evidence of class consciousness and a sense of collective work-place identity.

A Weberian analysis would identify class in terms of a group sharing a weak market position in the labour force. Weberians might identify any internal competition between workers and factors such as performance-related pay as designed to fragment the workforce. Any attempts at unionisation, they might argue, could reflect the pursuit of sectional interests (party) rather than evidence of class consciousness.

How have contemporary models of class developed?

As we have seen a range of neo-Marxist and neo- Weberian models of class have developed in the past 50 years or so adapting and interpreting the ideas of Marx and Weber. There is a consensus that the size and make-up of the working-class is shrinking as we move to a post-industrial society, however, there are markedly different interpretations about the meanings and consequences of this change.

Neo-Weberians such as John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood have focused upon occupational categories within a market power context.

Neo-Marxists argue that the critical issue is whether the working-class are ‘falsely conscious’.

A third group, the postmodernists have argued that class is dead; having lost its significance as a source of identity. Consumption, they argue, has become the main definer of people in society.

What do postmodernists say about class changes?

Postmodernists would question whether class and class identities are meaningful concepts anymore, arguing it makes more sense to speak of a fragmented society with identity increasingly derived from consumption rather than issues associated with production, such as occupation. According to a Postmodern vision, people are seen to acqu

This paper discusses some issues on gender. The analyses are taken from four different articles. This paper is divided into four parts. The first part begins with the relationship between language and gender, the second describes variation in language use across gender, the third part talks about gender revolution in society and the final part discuss about how gender shapes social relationship.

Mhute, Isaac (2008). Language and Gender. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Vol 2 (3). Retrieved on August 30, 2010 from: http://www.osisa.org/resources/docs/PDFs/OpenSpace-Nov2008/2_3_language_p060-063_isaac_mhute.pdf

This paper attempted to examine how language authorized or unauthorized people of different genders in society. The author also discussed how this authorization associates to the aspect of gender and women’s rights proportionality. The author addressed the issues by stating the other scholars’ opinions on the differences of language use by females or males group and how these differences portray the fairness judgement in society and associate this matter with the condition in Southern Africa.

There are several aspects where language may power the authorization of women’s language at the expense of men. Morgan (1986) drawn an example in the characterization of a country as “she” and in expressions of “mother tongue”. These illustrate that women have significant position and responsibility in society. In Shona language, this perception of woman as polar also contributed to the issue of women’s authorization, such as musha mukadzi, an expression that expressing women as the most vital components at home; vakadzi ndivo vachengetedzi vetsika dzedu, an expression that suggested women as the protector of the norms and values. On the other hand, some terms and expressions show manifestation that authorized men at the expense of women. As an illustration, Goddard and Patterson (2000) identified term such as “bachelor” and “spinster” refers to “unmarried adult male” and “unmarried adult female”. Explicitly, “bachelor” connotes a man who preferred to stay single; in contrast “spinster” connotes a woman who has been unsuccessful in finding a spouse. In chiShona, when one give birth to a girl, elders will say “hwakovanwa wafa woga wafa woga” meaning “now life has been divided each can die alone”, implying that the girl will get married and leave the house. On the contrary, when one give birth to a boy, the elder will say “makorokoto musha wakura” meaning “congratulation, the home has grown; it implies that men have greater value than women.

As a conclusion, the author suggested in changing perspective of woman in language and society, can only be re-composed by women. In line with this, McKenna (1992) indicates that assertive language should be adopted by women and declined to have their subordination as unavoidable.

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Bell, C.M., McCarthy, P.M. & McNamara, D.S. (2006). Variation in Language Use Across Gender: Biological versus Sociological Theories. Retrieved on Thursday, September 2, 2010 from http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/proceedings/2006/docs/p1009.pdf

Arguments over expenditure, feelings, labour division and male detachment during conflict have existed between men and women since long time ago. Biological theories determine gender as biological sex with independent contextual and stable roles. On the other hand, the social constructionist theory of gender presumes that gender roles are unstable and situated contextually where men and women are not limited to a specific language style, but interchangeably based on the context of social interaction.

In this paper dissimilarities in language use in perspective of biological and social construction of gender theories are briefly analyzed. Method used in this paper is qualitative linguistic approach to inquire differences in language use by both genders in marital conflict. A 54-text principles, brought by 27 males and females from counselling copies of relationship column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” from Ladies Home Journal.

The texts were examined using the Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and noted the percentage for self-referential, social phrases, positive emotion, that are shown in every text. As a result, there is no substantial difference between both genders in the number of variable percentage. This result is confirmed with the prediction that some features of stereotypical language use, as simulated by biological theory of gender, do not preserve in marital conflict context. This study contribute to the field by rendering empirical prove for the growth of gender theories and language use.

(Word count: 250)

England, Paula (2010). The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled. Gender and Society. 2010 24:149. Retrieved on August 22, 2010 from http://gas.sagepub.com/content/24/2/149.

The author identifies that the gender system has altered greatly and provide explanation for why the alterations were uneven. These changes occurred since 1960s and identified as “a revolution”. There were several indicators causing these changes. The author argues that in reduction of female activities and jobs, there were few cultural or institutional changes, and as a consequence, women posses greater inducement than men to proceed to gender-non-traditional activities and perspectives.

The changes in reduction of “female” activities and asymmetric inducements for men and women affected by education. Current study found that in 16 developed countries in 2000, women with more education were more likely to be hired. For instance, data in USA in 1970, 59 % of college graduated women, but only 43% women with less than high school education were hired. In 2007, the estimation increased to 80% for college graduated and 47 % for less than high school education.

Given these facts, the author generates two broad explanations. Initially, since the devaluation of cultural and institutional characteristics and activities related to women, men have few inducements to proceed into traditional female activities such as home-making or female-dominated occupation. On the other hand, women had economic inducement to proceed into male domains and occupations. Finally, the impacts of the co-occurrence of equal opportunity individualism and gender essentialism create opportunity for women to proceed into non-traditional fields of study or work when potential female fields are unavailable. While the reason for stalling is poorly stated with no relentless resultant. Change has seen as unintended impacts of institutional and cultural forces of effort of the feminist organization.

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Ridgeway, Cecilia L (2009). Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations. Gender and Society, 23:145. Retrieved 23 August 2010 from http://gas.sagepub.com/content/23/2/145.

This article indicates the argument stated by the author that gender is a cultural mainframe in organizing and forming social relation. Her argument is expressed by describing how gender frames social relations and how this frame differs in context of implication for gender inequality. This issue is defined using two empirical illustrations. Firstly, gender as social mainframe, is defined as a particular type of general cultural knowledge as a way to categorize and specify each other in a particular situation so that each can expect how to behave and align the actions consequently. Secondly, how gender pattern behaviour, is defined as implicit prejudices into expectation and behaviours that resulted in the setting of gender inequality.

In explaining the significance of gender mainframe, the author describes some examples from the previous studies. For instance, Whittington (2007) found that in an industry where gender-typed is not strong, such as Information Technology industry, the informal context and flexible organizational form bring more benefits to the females group than the hierarchical structure (Whittington and Smith-Doerr, 2008). On the other hand, in engineering and physical sciences, where gender-type in favour of men, there is stronger implicit biases against women’s competence. Another example is taken from Charles and Bradley (2009) analysis on the sex segregation of field of study, found that in wealthy post-industrial society, there is a larger gap between boys and girls in expressing kinship in math.

As a conclusion, the author suggested that when it concerns to gender, the impact of the processes at one level cannot be comprehended without mentioning the other levels. It is also suggested that modification in gender system of a society will be continuously repeated and may not move fluently.

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Human, animals and plants are created to have a good relationship with each other to make a better and beautiful life. Without animals and plants, human cannot eat anything and probably we cannot live anymore. Without human, some animals and plants also cannot live for long time because no one takes care of them. Therefore, we as a human must protect animals and plants to grow up with us together. Currently, many animals are extinct because many reasons to make them live in short life such as many people kill animals for their collections, pollution, natural disaster, the changes of weather, or killed by stronger animals. Therefore, many people are doing animals science to help, take care, protect and prevent animals to be extinct.

In this era, people are smart compared last era because of the rapid improvement in technology. Last time people do not understand how to fly, cure themselves and do networking. They just understand how to survive in this life. However, since many people realise it and go hard for education, they become smart and know how to do everything. Therefore, to come out with the best idea for a whole world, they must do many researches and tests. In order to undergo a good research we need to familiar ourselves with 3 main facts that is associate ourselves with new knowledge, educate the animal, and analyze the efficiency of the chemicals and animal’s tissue (Giridharan, Kumar & Muthuswamy 2000, page 2).

Researches spend high costs where they need a lot of money to buy all important tools for them to research in their laboratory. However, to do the improvement in medication, people use animals or plants. The cost to do research is not high but many animals and plants are being sacrificed. Although many people said that we are being immoral but we also cannot stand without doing anything with people who are needed medicine from animals. The common name for experimental use for animals is vivisection. Actually, There are a lot of reasons why researchers do animal science such as to make a medicine, test whether the new trial chemicals are good for human body or not and protect as well as the improvement in the future (The national anti-vivisection society 2004). Although we have to sacrify many animals but we could cure many people for a long period and save many lives for a billion of people.

For example, the first time scientist produced insulin by using the dog’s pancreas, cows and pigs but the improvement began continued until now they are not using animals anymore, where it depends on the technology as well as the human protein (Advameg Inc. 2010). Insulin is “a hormone that regulates the amount of glucose (sugar) in the blood and is required for the body to function normally” (Advameg Inc. 2010). Nowadays, highly purified pancreas extracts change into animal insulin that is sold as ‘natural’ insulin (Makame, 1992). According to AVERT organization (1986), there are three reasons that animals are used for experiments such as making sure the new medicine, drugs, and other pharmaceutical product are safe and usable, guaranteeing that the manufactured goods are efficient to human being, and studying the biology of the animal together with the function and response of certain disease to human body (AVERT organization 1986).

Although we could save people life but we also must think how about if all animals are gone away. If it happens we could not use them as our research anymore and have a good medicine to help people. People are now being selfish that could not look at the pity life of animals where they use them only for research without taking care about them. There are two categories that could be divided for animal in science, which are the use of vivisection can be split into two general categories such as living & undamaged animal and animals’ tissue. Moreover, those categories can be divided into several issues as well. Animal are used as lab tester to study human disease or in medical research, as test subjects, as living incubators for substances that are used in medicine; such as insulin, as modality of ideas, and as heuristic devices. In addition, the animals are also studied to educate people on dissection exercises in life science classrooms, guide medical doctor in some actions, and gain the knowledge of the part of the animals. The animals’ tissues are also used as additional parts for human or as the ingredients to make new vaccines and drugs. The scientist use the animal as their experiment to study all of them, but they do it to benefit many people, so that the scientist can save many people lives or make something that is useful to human being (The national anti-vivisection society 2004).

Actually, in the real life, people could accept the animal science if researchers use them as the good purpose such as to cure dead live people who are effected by cancer, AIDS, AIDS drugs or hepatitis. No one in this life could be able to see the increasing in dying people. Therefore, to develop and create the cures and treatment, scientist must use a lot of animals from rare until the common one to test, research and experiment about those deceases (aˆ¦.). People are deserved to live in this world although many deceases could happen inside their body. Even though, animal science is not allowed by religious where we kill animals for research but it is all depends on the purpose of using animals in scientific research. When people kill animals for unnecessary situations such as barbeque event, festival, and religious ceremony, it means people harm their lives and do not have any respect to them although they are animals. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is one of the powerful groups that is very concerned about animal rights with their motto “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment (PETA, 1980). PETA is a non-profit organization that helps human or non-human being to not be harm especially animals. Therefore, this organization always keeps on tract to reduce the animal abuse in the world and support the several types of treatments for animals (PETA, 1980). For example, The Medicines Act of 1968 states that the scientist have to tested all their pharmaceutical products to at least two different genus of live and intact mammals that one of them should be a large non-rodent. It means that most of countries allow scientists to do animals in scientific research to produce a better medicine and to ensure the safeness of the created medicines.

In America, scientists are used many animals more than 100 millions to do their experiments project over a year but those animals, such as bird, fish, mice, and other cold blooded, are not under the Animal Welfare Act. Animal Welfare Act is the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers (United States Department of Agriculture 2010). Therefore, there is no record for those killed animals under the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA). It means people do not know the flow of animals’ populations such as how many dogs are being killed and still alive in America. Animal Welfare Act is not included those animals because they continue to multiply until cannot countless by human except we are using a modern technology. Based on Lin, the reason that those animals could not be included in Animal Welfare is 95% of the vivisection is mice and rats with nine billion land animals killed in order to get food in US, and a huge majority of animal experimentation that are used by humans are rejected from AWA’s protection. However, although there are a lot of animals that are not recorded but other animals (e.g., dogs, cats, non-human primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, and farmed animals used for biomedical research) are recorded to know the populations for those animals (Lin), that could refer to the data in the table 2.

Table 1: Animals Used in Research by Category of Pain and Distress- 2006

Animals used in research by catagory of pain and distress

(The American Anti-Vivisection Society 2010)

Based on the table 1, The USDA states the number of animals that are put in the pain and distress category during the experiments on 2006. In the category of No Pain, No Drugs, the USDA means that the animals that got experiment without any pain and distress on them. With Pain, With Drugs category means that the animals were used in research that affects pain and distress, but the animal will receive the medication after the test to release the pain n distress. Furthermore, in the With Pain, No Drugs category, the scientist gave the animal constant pain and distress as part of the experiment. Lastly, over 73,000 animals, seven percent of the total, feel unalleviated pain and distress in 2006.

Table 2: Number of animals used by research from the first reorting year (FY 1963) to 2006.

In Australia, animals are oppressed and harmed in many ways such as raising them for food and clothing, using them in the entertainments such as rodeos and circuses, slaughtering of local animals, and testing them on behave of medicines, cosmetics, and households. Animals are often considered as commodities, and many people believe that their existence is very crucial since the animal effects productivity and profit, but they are living things, so they need a lot of consideration (Animals Australia, 2010). After killing 10 of 29 pigs, the team from the Institute of Mountain Emergency Medicine in Italy and the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria stopped the experiment since many people became angry of this experiment (mail online 2010). According to Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher (2010), the use of animal research might be validated if only the scientist follow and meet the stringent conditions such as the harm that the animals receive should be very little, the human and animal need that using animals should be extremely interesting, and the chance of success on using the animal should be very huge (Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research & Teaching 2010).

The Australian citizen desire more benefit that can be brought from animal experiment in the future. However, they also believe that any pain and distress on animal on vivisection should be kept to the minimum level it can be. The main way to do it is by applying 3Rs Principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement. Replacement means the animals are only used when not-animal substitutes are not suitable. Reduction denotes that the scientist must use the animal in very low number to get their goal on experiment. Moreover, Refinement indicates that the scientists have to make the pain, suffering, and distress as low as possible (Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research & Teaching 2010).

Animal science has many goals such as improving the health and well-being people for entertainment, sport, recreational, and service animals, discovery a better ways to guard and manage the range of animal species, especially endanger animals, to keep the balance in the ecologically stable, developing endangered animals to prevent extinction, and broadening the knowledge and understanding of biology science and life processes for all animal species (Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research & Teaching 2010).

In the conclusion, animals in scientific research have been discussing since long time ago until now. It could be accepted by people when the research is useful for helping to cure the illness such as AIDS, drugs or diabetes. It is also being accepted by many countries to take animals for doing experiments that may be able to have a good result for the countries and citizens. Animals could be extinct if many animals are being killed for unimportant things. However, if animals are used for save people lives, there is a good purpose of it. Therefore, animals in scientific research are used to improve the quality, safety and human practice.

Development, which implies positive values, has been the concern of mankind from time immemorial. Many renowned thinkers devoted efforts to understand development better – consequently theories of development have emerged. Ingemar Fagerlind and Lawrence J. Saha (1983) cited at least four clusters of development theories, namely, the (i) classic cyclical theory, which includes the Greek and Roman views of the never ending cycles of growth and decay of all material things, including nations and civilization; (ii) Augustinian Christian theory, which represented the views of “doomsdayer” who sees the world as heading toward major catastrophe, including the threat from a nuclear war or the explosion of the population bomb; (iii) linear theory, represented by optimists who see development as a never-ending progress; and (iv) cyclical linear theory which combines the essence of the conflict orientation of the cyclical theory and the optimistic orientation of the linear theory.

By and large, people who see a dynamic interactive relationship between education and development are advocates of the linear model theory. Within this model, however, are three groups of social scientists, namely, the so called structural functionalists (e.g. Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton), the human capitalist theories (e.g. Theodore Schultz), and the modernization theorists (Alex Inkeles).

The human capitalist theory and to a certain extent the modernization theory constitute the framework for building cases to show that education enhances development.

The human capital theory postulates that the most efficient path to national development lies in the improvement of a country’s population. And of course, educators and almost all socio-economic planners are convinced that the best way to improve the population is through various forms of education and training

Those who think of education as crucial to development also draw inspiration from the modernization theory. Alex Inkeles and his colleagues think that to modernize is to develop. Society cannot develop unless its population holds modern attitudes and values. They see a direct relationship between education and socio-economic development, in that education brings about a change in outlook in the individual which promotes productivity and work efficiency. Education has a modernizing influence on values, beliefs and behaviours which make human beings more development-oriented. Viewed from the modernization theory, education is called upon to re-orientate and/or suppress beliefs, attitudes and values which tend to obstruct the initiation of the modernization process.

EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN CAPITAL THEORY

S.G. Strumlin first attempted to quantify the role of education in economic growth in 1925. It was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that interest in the study of the nature of the changes occurring in the different sectors of the economy in the United States of America pushed economists to search for explanations. Some of these economists such as Denison and Solow found out that a large part of growth in Gross National Product (GNP) in the United States over the first half of the 20th Century remained unexplained when they tried to attribute the growth to conventional economic factors. Even after taking into account increases in real physical capital like equipment, structures and the like, and total number of hours worked, a large residual still remained to be explained. However, they came to realize that important qualitative changes in the labour force had occurred. People were more productive for each hour they worked because of the greater skills and knowledge they possessed. The assumption was made that formal education was instrumental to these high levels of productivity that

they were observing in the economy.

Economists such as Schults and Becker, and economists of education such as Welch and

Hoffman explained a part of the residual by what they called “Human Capital” of which

education through formal schooling was considered a major factor. It is the view of Fagerlind and Saha that one of the first systematic articulations of the Human Capital Theory occurred in 1960 in Theodore Schultz’s Presidential Address to the American Economic Association on the topic “investment in Human Capital.” In the address, Schultz suggested that education-was not to be viewed simply as a form of consumption but rather as a productive investment. He also argued that an educated population provided the type of labour force necessary for industrial development.

Proponents of Human Capital Theory assume that formal education is highly instrumental to the improvement of the productive capacity of a population. The improvements of the productive capacity of the human work force in this sense is a form of capital investment. Human capital theorists postulated that the most efficient path to national development lies in the improvement of human capital through education. They also contended that the two pre-conditions for economic growth and development in any nation were investment in education and improvement in technology. Klees and Wells put this argument as follows:

Human Capital Theory considers educational activities explicitly as investment that contribute to efficiency now and growth over time. From this perspective, education develops an individual’s productive skills and therefore yields benefits over time to the individual and to the society as a whole. Thus we can evaluate, at least in part, the relative worth of allocating resources to educational activities compared to other alternative uses of these resources by examining educational costs and benefits. This framework has provided the basis for a considerable amount of educational resource and policy through the developed and developing world. This orientation championed by Schultz and Associates dominated the thinking in Economics of Education throughout the sixties. It formed the basis for manpower planning models used in forecasting educational enrollments required for specific development needs.

Human Capital Theory also gave economists the conceptual tools with which to link man -power demands, their changes over time in response to economic growth and the educational system; and to incorporate them into elaborate national development plans and growth targets.

Four manpower planning strategies or guidelines emerged from Human Capital research. They are the Social Demand Approach, the Manpower Requirements Analysis, the Cost-Benefit or Rate of Return Analysis and the Optimum Allocation of Resources Method.

The social demand approach assumes that education is a social good. It is believed that its

expansion as the demand arises will eventually result in benefits for the society. Therefore the state should bear the costs of educational expansion. Demographic data and social conditions are used in planning educational provisions when using this approach. Manpower require-ments for certain economic production targets can be estimated and produced through the formal education system. Planning education using this technique

involves estimating skill requirements for certain occupational categories needed for economic development over a period of time.

In cost-benefit analysis, estimates of the costs of acquiring various levels and kinds of education and the benefits associated with each kind and level are made. The assumption is that the value of the ratios so estimated would guide planners in decision-making with respect to the kinds of education to be offered or changed. In so doing, competitive rates of return on investment in education relative to other investment portfolios in the conventional capital markets can be maintained.

The method used in optimum allocation of resources is to describe the principal relationships between education and other sectors of the economy and then to allocate resources optimally, given some objective functions and constraints. In general, linear programming techniques are used to derive the education production functions.

In most developing countries, the manpower requirements approach was used as a guideline to relate educational planning to economic needs. A survey in 76 countries in 1968 showed that 65 of them had educational plans modeled after the manpower needs of the country. How-ever, as Sobel pointed out, protagonists of the manpower planning approach subsequently developed systematic mathematical models integrating manpower needs and educational planning which resulted in a proliferation of single-occupation studies in virtually all societies by each university or national university system, governmental manpower department, education ministry or vocational training department. Linear programming techniques were used to combine rates of return or cost-benefit analyses approaches with manpower requirements techniques to generate models of demand for education from the expected level and distribution of output in a given economy. These were done in an effort to ascertain whether the resultant manpower and education mix would maximize the growth of Gross National Product, maximize the excess of benefits over the costs of education. Most of the research findings showed that in country after country, a correlation exists between levels of education and subsequent lifetime earnings. In a comprehensive research study, Psacharopoulos standardized

53 rate of return studies for 32 different countries and sought to determine what generalizations could be made from the results. Some of the findings are as follows:

* rates of return are generally higher in less developed countries;

* primary education tends to yield the highest returns;

* returns to human capital exceed those on physical capital in underdeveloped countries but roughly equal those on physical capital in developed countries; and

* differences in per capita income can be explained better by differences in human than in physical capital.

This theoretical orientation of the Human Capital Theory, as Kless and Wells point out

“provided a basic justification for large public expenditure on the expansion of formal school systems in developing countries. Its appeal was based on the presumed economic returns to investment in education both at the macro and micro levels. Thus governments intensified efforts to invest in Human Capital so as to achieve rapid economic growth and development.”The obvious policy implication for most governments given the results of such empirical research was to expand enrollments and to provide for a longer period of schooling in order to maximize the benefits from schooling.

In Africa, a Conference of African States on the development of Education in Africa was organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from May 15 – 25, 1961. The Conference, as Thompson noted, “firmly grasped the concept that education was an investment in productivity” and urged that “educational provision should be planned continuously in relation to manpower needs at all times.”

EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT AND MODERNITY THEORY

Another dimension from which the relationship between education and development was

vigorously examined and explicated during the 1960s was in the social psychological and

sociological formulations of modernity theory. Modernity theorists argued that modernization is essentially a social-psychological process through which a country becomes modern only after its population has adopted modern attitudes, values and beliefs. They tried to show that there were causal links between modernizing institutions, modern values, modern behaviour, modern society and economic development. They maintained that the creation of modern values can be planned. Particular social institutions like the school, the family, the media and the workplace were identified as being of extreme importance in the emergence of modem values. However, most modernity theorists placed considerable emphasis on education because the school was perceived as a major agent in producing the skilled manpower and the modem

attitudes and values necessary for the existence of a modern society.

In the early postaa‚¬”World War II era, approximately twenty societies were regarded as highly modernized and roughly another ten to twenty were depicted as having passed a threshold on the path to modernization.

Definitions of modernized varied. Some noted structural features, such as levels of education, urbanization, use of inanimate sources of energy, and fertility. Others pointed to attitudes, such as secularization, achievement orientation, functional specificity in formal organizations, and acceptance of equality in relationships. Conscious of the ethnocentric nature of many earlier explanations for growth in national power and income, social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s generally omitted cultural traits associated closely with Western history from definitions of modernity. Yet, given the rhetoric of the Cold War and a preoccupation with democracy in U.S. national identity, political institutions became a central factor in many definitions.

The theory of modernization normally consists of three parts: (1) identification of types of societies, and explanation of how those designated as modernized or relatively modernized differ from others; (2) specification of how societies become modernized, comparing factors that are more or less conducive to transformation; and (3) generalizations about how the parts of a modernized society fit together, involving comparisons of stages of modernization and types of modernized societies with clarity about prospects for further modernization. Actually, reasoning about all of these issues predated postwar theory. From the Industrial Revolution, there were recurrent arguments that a different type of society had been created, that other societies were either to be left permanently behind or to find a way to achieve a similar transformation, and that not all modernizing societies had equal success in sustaining the process due to differences in economic, political, and other institutions. In the middle of the 1950s, these themes acquired new social science and political casting with the claim of increased rigor in analysis.

(Modernization Theory – Defining Modernization Theory

Modernization Theory

Modernization theory is a description and explanation of the processes of transformation from traditional or underdeveloped societies to modern societies. In the words of one of the major proponents, “Historically, modernization is the process of change towards those types of social, economic, and political systems that have developed in Western Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and have then spread to other European countries and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the South American, Asian, and African continents” (Eisenstadt 1966, p. 1). Modernization theory has been one of the major perspectives in the sociology of national development and underdevelopment since the 1950s. Primary attention has focused on ways in which past and present premodern societies become modern (i.e., Westernized) through processes of economic growth and change in social, political, and cultural structures.

In general, modernization theorists are concerned with economic growth within societies as indicated, for example, by measures of gross national product. Mechanization or industrialization are ingredients in the process of economic growth. Modernization theorists study the social, political, and cultural consequences of economic growth and the conditions that are important for industrialization and economic growth to occur. Indeed, a degree of circularity often characterizes discussions of social and economic change involved in modernization processes because of the notion, embedded in most modernization theories, of the functional compatibility of component parts.

Although, there are many versions of modernization theory, major implicit or explicit tenets are that (1) societies develop through a series of evolutionary stages; (2) these stages are based on different degrees and patterns of social differentiation and reintegration of structural and cultural components that are functionally compatible for the maintenance of society; (3) contemporary developing societies are at a premodern stage of evolution and they eventually will achieve economic growth and will take on the social, political, and economic features of western European and North American societies which have progressed to the highest stage of social evolutionary development; (4) this modernization will result as complex Western technology is imported and traditional structural and cultural features incompatible with such development are overcome.

For example, in the social realm, modern societies are characterized by high levels of urbanization, literacy, research, health care, secularization, bureaucracy, mass media, and transportation facilities. Kinship ties are weaker, and nuclear conjugal family systems prevail. Birthrates and death rates are lower, and life expectancy is relatively longer. In the political realm, the society becomes more participatory in decision-making processes, and typical institutions include universal suffrage, political parties, a civil service bureaucracy, and parliaments. Traditional sources of authority are weaker as bureaucratic institutions assume responsibility and power. In the economic realm, there is more industrialization, technical upgrading of production, replacement of exchange economies with extensive money markets, increased division of labor, growth of infrastructure and commercial facilities, and the development of large-scale markets. Associated with these structural changes are cultural changes in role relations and personality variables. Social relations are more bureaucratic, social mobility increases, and status relations are based less on such ascriptive criteria as age, gender, or ethnicity and more on meritocratic criteria. There is a shift from relations based on tradition and loyalty to those based on rational exchange, competence, and other universally applied criteria. People are more receptive to change, more interested in the future, more achievement-oriented, more concerned with the rights of individuals, and less fatalistic.

Educational Reform and Human Capital Development.

Aga Khan University Examination Board (AKU-EB) is a Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education established by Aga Khan University (AKU) in response to demand from schools for more appropriate school examinations. AKU-EB was founded in August 2003. It offers examination services to both Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSSC) throughout Pakistan. Its primary purpose is to improve the quality of education by making examinations of reputable standard more accessible to Pakistani students and having them increasingly valued by leading higher education institutions in and outside the country.

In 2000, AKU-BOT approved the recommendation of the task force to establish and examination board. Its principal aim was to offer high quality public examinations using modern methods of assessment to test achievement within the national curriculum in order to enhance the quality of education. AKU-EB from the beginning was envisaged as a small undertaking which would be able to serve as a role model to have positive impact in field of education.

There has been great amount of funds poured in to AKU EB. Besides AKU, USAID supported through the Government’s Educational Sector Reforms throughout Pakistan . After the initial start-up period of five years, the University expects to become solely responsible for AKU-EB’s financial affairs.

The general objective of the AKU-EB is to design and offer high quality public examinations in English and Urdu based on the national curriculum for secondary and higher secondary education. It also arranges training sessions for teachers to develop appropriate learning materials to prepare teachers and students for the new examination system. It is intended to serve as a model of internationally recognized good practice in order to enhance the country’s capacity for educational assessment and tests, and therefore to improve the quality of education in schools, and through them, the quality of education in the national universities.

The concept of human capital and education revolutions intertwined because formal education is an important factor in human capital formation.

One of the objectives of AKU EB is to improve school environment by improving their curriculum by changing assessment strategy. Generally an individualaa‚¬a„?s levels of human capital are raised producing better school results. Hence this effect the policy making in public and privte sector involved in educational reforms.

Education is an investment in human capital, that is, in the skills and knowledge that produce a return to the individual in the form of higher earnings. Education also has social returns or spillovers. The presence of educated workers in a region enhances the earnings of those who, regardless of their own educational level, work with or near educated workers.

I would be interested to know about how AKU EB is measuring its impact on schools and teachers. How it can be explained by human capital development theory perspective? How is it investing in building infra structure and equiopment and training? What are individual and social returns of AKU EB efforts? And what are its effects on changing other local boardsaa‚¬a„? assessment strategies and curricula. How are teachers and parents looking at AKU EB as source of human capital development?

“What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness” (Baruch Spinoza). Happiness basic meaning is an emotion that creates feelings of contentment, love, complete joy, and life satisfaction. However, how happiness is attained and interpreted can vary across cultures throughout the world. Researchers have asked the question of what makes one culture happier than another, and why. According to Suh and Oishi(2002), “all humans strive to be happy is true, intriguing findings emerged when researchers scrutinized happiness in more detail across cultures: 1) individualist cultures are happier than collectivist, 2) psychological attributes characterizing the self such as, self-esteem, and self-consistency are more relevant to happiness of individualist than to the happiness of collectivist, and 3) the self-judgment of happiness is anchored on different types of cues and experience across cultures.” Adrian White a researcher at the University of Leicester researched over a 100 studies within the psychology of happiness and created the first Map of Happiness using over 80,000 people worldwide, across 178 countries. He ranked the countries based on relational data to a nations, health, wealth, and education ( ).

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a commonly used term within the field of psychology, which can be defined as how someone identifies his or her current life satisfaction or happiness. There are three components to SWB: 1) life satisfaction, 2) positive emotional experiences, and 3) absence of negative emotions (Suh & Oishi, 2002). Therefore, people that are satisfied with their lives regularly feel positive emotions, and rarely experience negative feelings are considered to possess a high level of SWB. Most importantly, one’s personal subjective perception over their own personal well-being can only be judged by them and is of great importance.

There are many cultural trends within SWB such as, happier nations tend to be happier, gross national product (GNP) as well as, a linkage between SWB and income level across nations attributes to higher levels of happiness. On the contrary, the idea that richer countries are happier is not true. A country may be economically stable but they may also value human rights and provide a democratic government that contributes to their SWB. Therefore, it is not certain whether possessing a national wealth causes SWB because of their monetary value or simply because of non-materialist qualities. Furthermore, there are groups of nations that challenge the linkage between SWB and income. Suh and Oishi (2002) reported that “SWB reports of some wealthy East Asian nations are among the lowest in the world (e.g., Japan), in comparison to some Latin American nations (e.g., Puerto Rico) reporting having a higher level of SWB in contrast to their reported income level. In addition, “Once a nation becomes rich enough to fulfill most people’s basic needs (food, shelter), further economic prosperity does not guarantee further increase of SWB.”

Individualism, Collectivism, and Subjective Well-Being

Individualism and collectivism are dimensions of national cultures and they are strongly linked to SWB. Individualistic societies (e.g., America) values individual rights, and feelings are more important over the expectations of the in-group, thus, everyone is expected to look after themselves and/or their immediate families; whereas, collectivist societies (e.g., East Asia) value the needs of the in-group over the needs of the individual. Personal freedom may have positive and negative consequences. Within individualistic or collectivist societies, people have personal freedom to choose their own lifestyle with the risk of not having a strong social support which may lead to serious consequences such as, suicide. On the other hand, collectivist societies do posses strong social support as long as one does not seek to fulfill personally rewarding goals that do not reflect the in-group goals.

According to Diener, Diener, and Diener (1995), “although there seems to be a tradeoff associated with personal freedom, in study after study researchers have found that individualist culture members are happier than collectivist cultural members. One explanation is that because wealthier individualist societies have a lower level of poor living conditions to their counter poor collectivist societies may account for this differentiation. Additionally, “when a nation’s degree of individualism is statistically controlled, income no longer predicts subjective well-being.”

A major contributor to a high level of SWB is, having a high sense of personal choice and freedom. In order to achieve personal goals, individualist are willing to risk attaining their goals over having strong network of support since personal goals affect people on a daily basis whereas, life crisis only happen occasionally. Additionally, individualistic societies strive for a high level of SWB than collectivist societies. Within individualistic societies, there is accountability for each individual to attain happiness in their lives because the inability to attain happiness is perceived as though they have not been successful. Whereas in collectivist societies, there is not much personal choice and freedom to seek happiness because their level of luck or their ancestry is what determines ones happiness.

People in individualistic cultures may believe that they are happier than collectivist cultures because they have personal freedom to choose how to evaluate their level of happiness on their areas of strength such as, their careers or their marriages. For example, if Bobby is an excellent lawyer, whereas, Tom has a successful 30-year marriage. Consequently, if the most valued personal quality were career and marriage success, then they would both would feel quite happy. These individual beliefs are respected within individualistic cultures. However, in collectivist cultures what is valued is based on the in-group and not by the individual. For instance, achievements such as, education may be their area of strength and evaluating factor for happiness. For that reason, if they are unable to meet these goals it is viewed as failure to the in-group and they are unable to justify happiness.

Individualism vs. Collectivism

Psychologist, Dr. Geert Hofstede worked and analyzed fifty countries from around the world and came up with four primary dimensions to describe a country’s culture, which include Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, and Uncertainty Avoidance ( ). Individualism describes the countries orientation towards the group or the individual. The orientation that looks to the group is referred to as Collectivism, and the orientation that looks to the individual is Individualism. According to Hofstede, Individualism and Collectivism assess the function of the individual and the group within society. Hofstede reported that there is a correlation between individualism and wealth. Within the ten individualist countries, Denmark ranks 74. Hofstede concluded that individualistic cultures place achievement on family and profession.

Denmark has a very high individualism culture with a score of 74, with only seven other countries having a higher individualistic culture. The Danes are very proud of their work and do not accept help from others because they believe they do it best. They strive to be on top of their business getting the most credit or the greatest individual merits. Danes also like to have a very private life away from their business lives. When meeting they will only talk about business plans and work at the working environment and then when at a family meal they will discourage business talk. Denmark is also a competitive country when it comes to education. Even the education, Denmark’s individualism is very important there is a constant struggle to be on top of your class, and have the best grades and merit status. Although Denmark is a very high individualistic country, they have some collectivist characteristics. Danes are proud people, however, most are modest and reserved about their accomplishments and refrain from bragging. They believe there is one way to act and if you are not acting according to the codes, someone will speak up to correct or discipline you. Danes do not like to stand out, nor do they yell or scream so they do not call attention to themselves when in public. In addition, when doing business each person will give their input on the decision and then after getting everyoneaa‚¬a„?s input they will make a decision.

t Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Cultural Dimension(Graph). 2003. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_denmark.shtml

The United States high rankings of Individualism signify a more self-reliant, self-centered population that is concerned with themselves and their families. Individualistic population’s posses a more “I” than “we” mentality; for instance, when climbing the corporate ladder they do not take into account how this would affect others. Americans are constantly in pursuit of reaching for a better job or position. When Americans reach success, they are quick to emphasize their success and achievements. Since America is such a competitive nation, the people are expected to defend their interests and try to promote themselves whenever possible. Unlike the Danes, Americans rarely are modest, they want to be heard, stand out in a crowd, and is ready to boast whenever possible.

World Map of Happiness

Adrian White a social psychologist from the University of Leicester created the first “World Map of Happiness”. White analyzed information from more than 100 studies within the field of happiness research. Some of the collected data that White analyzed in order to create a global projection of SWB was published by United Nations Educational , Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the New Economics Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the United Nations Human Development Report (UNHDR). In order for White to map out SWB across 178 countries, his research incorporated using a battery of statistical data along with responses of 80,000 people worldwide.

Adrian White analyzed the data in relation to a nation’s health, wealth, and access to education. According to White, the main factors related to determining a nation’s happiness are health, the level of poverty, access to food and water, access to basic education, and population size. The top ten countries included Denmark and five other European countries, including Switzerland, Austria, and Iceland, while bottoming the list were Zimbabwe and Burundi (Kamenev, 2006). Some of the better scoring nations were smaller encompassing greater social cohesion with a stronger sense of national identity, whereas, the nations with the largest populations scored the worst. For instance, China ranked 82, India 125, and Russia 168. The United States ranked 23.

Rank

Country

Rank

Country

Rank

Country

1

Denmark

11

Ireland

23

United States

2

Switzerland

12

Luxembourg

35

Germany

3

Austria

13

Costa Rica

41

United Kingdom

4

Iceland

14

Malta

62

France

5

The Bahamas

15

The Netherlands

82

China

6

Finland

16

Antigua and Barbuda

90

Japan

7

Sweden

17

Malaysia

125

India

8

Bhutan

18

New Zealand

167

Russia

9

Brunei

19

Norway

177

Zimbabwe

10

Canada

20

Seychelles

178

Burundi

Jubak, J Jubak, J.. (2009). GDP vs. GNH (Gross National Happiness). MSN Money. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/gdp-vs-gnh-gross-national-happiness.aspx?page=2

Not surprisingly, being wealthy and healthy can influence a person’s level of happiness. Wealthier countries ranked higher on the index such as, Switzerland ranked two, and Luxemburg 10 in comparison to impoverished and unhealthy countries like most African countries. For instance, Zimbabwe ranking 177 has an AIDS rate of 25%, average life expectancy of 39, and an 80% poverty rate. Fellow Africans in Burundi ranked the worst 178, despite have a slightly lower poverty rate of 68%, their low ranking was partly due to their constant conflicts between the Hutus and the Tutsis (Kamenev, 2006).

In the past, researchers have linked collectivism with a high level of SWB. However, some highly collectivist Asian nations scored worse such as, China ranked 82, Japan 90, and India 125. Furthermore, Capitalist countries typically associated with being heartless were not a source of unhappiness. With the top scoring countries being strong capitalist, including the U.S. ranking 23, allegedly possessing free-market systems attributes to unhappiness because it may create a sense of insecurity and competition is not true.

A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being (map). 2006. Retrieved March 15, 2010 from: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=893

Danish

Denmark easily tops the World Happiness Map with their negative poverty level, endless public and social services, and high standard of living. Education is of great importance to them, in turn they possess a high level of education including, top-notch public schools, and affordable private schools. Their strong sense of national identity is mainly due to their low population levels. Furthermore, their panorama of natural beauty could not hurt them either, however, the weather is cold and windy.

Most Danes value equality, coziness, individuality and democracy. Danes’ tone is informal in comparison with many other countries. Friends, family members and colleagues are addressed with the informal “you” and their first name. It is also normal to address managers by their first name. Additionally, the informal tone is found in the educational system, where students address their teachers by first name.

Discussion and debate are fundamental aspects of Dane’s upbringing, both in society and in families. This means that many Danes have a fundamental awareness that it is possible to speak up and have an influence. Danes business world and associations are social, informative with a structure that characterizes Denmark.

In Denmark, importance is placed on everyone being equal and having equal rights without regard to social background and origin. Thus, one could be led to believe that Danes are anti-individualists; however, this is far from the truth. As in most other European countries, Danes have a fundamental belief in the rights of the individual and career, housing, etc., which is selected, based on their individual needs. Entrepreneurship and initiative are prized and self-confidence is generally high among Danes. This ability to combine individualism with a focus on the welfare of the group is what one could call social individualism.

Denmark has a comprehensive public health service, including doctors, medical specialist, hospitals, health service, home care, health visitor services, and pediatric dental care and more. The Danish health service is based on the principle of equal access to the health services for all citizens. The municipalities are responsible for preventative health care programs for children, home nursing, health visitor services, pediatric dental care and in-school health services. The municipalities issue health cards and administer citizens’ choice of doctor and health insurance group. The five regions are responsible for operating the hospitals and psychiatric treatment in the regions.

Americans

America is the land of free and strives to “be all that you can be.” Nearly every American could agree that American values are based upon individual freedom, which may be considered individualism or independence. The United States solidified and guaranteed these values with the creation of the United States Constitution. It encompasses the belief that it is everyone’s individual responsibility to choose his or her own destiny by treating everyone as equal and not judged by race, gender, religion, age, disability, or sexual preference.

The key to success and financial freedom is often attributed to education. Education is not limited to the classroom for Americans; it is extend by educational programs such as, extracurricular activities, and internships. Additionally, continued education through adult education programs are just as equally valued.

The American family unit is consists of love, respect for all members and bringing happiness to each individual member. Individuality is emphasized by allowing children to disagree or even argue with their parents, which is regarded as a part of developing independence. American family values can easily be misunderstood by other cultures or perceived as a sign of disrespect.

The American Dream is attained by hard work, persistence, and resiliency. Success is measured by individual success, power, status, and wealth. In America, the government protects the rights of the individual and the individual does not need to protect those of the government. Progression is the key to success and change is constant in America. If one cannot keep up with what is happening they will be left behind because was important yesterday is not necessarily important today.

The hunt for happiness in America can be quite difficult because it can be compared to an individual sport. Americans are quite competitive including the search for happiness. It is believed that happiness is directly attributed to a person’s family and friends. Interestingly enough, possibly everything that defines an American could possibly be what is preventing us from being happy.

Conclusion

One’s happiness is influenced just as much by culture as it does by our goals and personalities. Most people in society desire some form of well-being psychologically as well as physically. Depending on what culture a person is a part of may be the defining factor for whether a person his happy or not. Many researchers from the field of happiness psychology have studied whether happiness could be regarded as universal. We now know that it is not. The pursuit of happiness varies greatly depending on one’s culture and circumstances. What is certain is that happiness is linked to health, wealth, and education. Furthermore, whether or not one is a part of an individualist or collectivist nation, is it the individual that has priority or is it the in-group that makes someone happy?

Anthropology is crucial for understanding the contemporary world. Anthropology offers both things to think about and things to think with. Anthropologists would be interested in Totemism because they study people throughout the world, investigating their history, behaviour, how they adapt to different environments, communicate and socialise with each other, along with examining the biological characteristics that make us human, our physiology, genetic make-up, nutritional history and evolution along with social features like language, culture, politics, family and religion.

Totemism is a belief system where humans are believed to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being such as an animal or plant. The totem is thought to interact with a given kin group or individual and serve as their emblem or symbol. Totemism has been described as ‘a cluster of traits in religious and in the social organisation of populates’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, 2013). Totemism originates in populations whose traditional economies relied on hunting, gathering and mixed farming with the emphasis on rearing cattle. Totemism is a multifaceted set of ideas and ways of behaviour built on a worldview drawn from nature. There are ideological, mystical, emotional, reverential, genealogical relationships of social groups or specific persons with animal or natural objects, the totem. There is a difference between group and individual Totemism although they share a few basic characteristics; they happen with different emphasis and in specific forms. Generally societies have special names and emblems to relate to the totem, and those it sponsors engage in partial identification with the totem or symbolic integration to it. Usually, there is a taboo against people killing, eating, or touching the totem.

Individual Totemism is articulated in an intimate relationship of friendship, respect and protection between a person and a particular species of animal; the natural object can grant special power to its owner. However, this relationship, in the case of the individual totem, begins and ends with the individual man, and is not, like the clan totem, transmitted by inheritance. An individual totem in America is:

“Usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fasts which American Indians observe at puberty. He kills the animal or bird of which he dreams, and henceforward wears its skin or feathers, or sonic part of them, as an amulet, especially on the war-path and in hunting” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013)

Individual totems among the Slave, Hare and Dogrib Indians will always be a carnivorous animal, and must not be skinned, eaten or killed. A man will always carry a photograph of his totem; if they are unsuccessful in a chase he will smoke to it and make a speech.

Group Totemism is the most widespread belief system. The totem is often an animal or plant that is respected by all members of the social group, because of a mystical or ritual relationship between the group, the spirit which embodies the totem represents the bond of unity within the tribe or clan. The group believe they are descended from a totem ancestor or that they and the totem are brothers. The totem can be viewed a group symbol and the protector of all members of the group. The animal or plant totem is the object of a taboo, just as the individual totem it is forbidden to kill or eat the sacred animal. It is possible for the totem symbol to be tattooed on the body, engraved on weapons or carved on totem poles. Males and females in some cultures have their own totem; however, typically Totemism is connected with clans or blood relatives. Marriage between members of the same totemic clan is totally forbidden. Group Totemism is usually associated with people in Africa, India, Oceania, North America and some parts of South America.

The first theory on Totemism was conducted by McLennan (1869) who searched for the origins of totemism, he belied that:

“The ancient nations came, in prehistoric times, through the totem stage, having animals and plants, and the heavenly bodies conceived as animals, for gods before the anthropomorphic gods appeared” (Levi-Strauss, 1969, p. 18)

Many scholars believed this theory and set out with the assumption that ‘some type of UR-totemism has existed, and that its faint contours could be discerned behind the left-over totemic systems fragments of present day’ (ibid, 18). McLennan’s theory was criticised by Taylor (1899) who discarded the confusion of Totemism with simple worship of animals and plants, and viewed Totemism as a relationship between one type of animal and a clan but he did argue with the idea that totems were the basis of religion.

Franz Boas (1916) research was based on North West American Indians and he found a society employing a visual form of Totemism in the form of totem poles. The totem pole was made up of mystical characters from the tribes ancestral past. Item were chosen from nature and used for cultural purposes. Totem poles functioned as an emblem of a clan or family, showing its unity and the rights which each clan were entitled to, and as a reminder of each clan’s link to a spirit ancestor. Totems were also a form of communication as tribes had no written language, so the totem poles were used to tell their stories, legends and events. Totems could not only be for clans they could also be individual however, only the most affluent tribe members could afford to have their own totem carved. Boas (1916) argued against a psychological or historical origin of totemism because its characters could be linked with individuals, and are in every social organisation, appearing in various cultural contexts and would not be possible to fit all totemtistic phenomena into one classification.

The first complete work on totemism was conducted by Sir James Frazer (1919) who developed several theories in regard to the origin of totemism. The first theory suggested that men have totems because they expect benefits from them:

“The connection between a man and his totem is mutually beneficent; the totem protects the man, and the man shows his respect for the totem in various ways, by not killing it if it be an animal, and not cutting or gathering it if it be a plant” (Frazer, 1887, p. 3)

His second theory was that ‘totemism was a system of magic intended to provide a supply of food for someone else’ (Hopkins, 1918, p. 153), this was disregarded in place his final theory which was more radical than the others and based on the fact that:

“Some savages believe their offspring comes not from intercourse between man and woman, but from the spirits of animals or quasi-animals seen by the woman or from the food she eats. They think that the spirits which thus become their children are really the animals they have seen or whose flesh they have eaten before conceiving (ibid, p. 153)

This is what Frazer called the conceptional theory.

Totemism at this point had come under attack from American anthropologist Goldenweiser (1910) who began by listing five key characteristics believed to be symptomatic of totemism, ‘an exogamous clan ( people marry outside of their own social group), the name of the clan derived from the totem, a religious attitude toward the totem; as a “friend” or “brother” or “protector”, taboo’s or restrictions against the killing and eating of the totem, a belief in the decent from the totem’ (ibid, p. 182-83). Goldenweiser (1910) concluded that:

“Each of these traits..displays more or less a striking independence in its distribution; and most of them can be shown to be widely-spread ethnic phenomena, diverse in origin not necessarily coordinated in development, and displaying a rich variability of psychological make-up” (ibid, p.266)

Although not willing to give up the idea totally he proposed an alternative definition of totemism in terms of the association between “definite social units “and “objects and symbols of emotional value” (ibid, p. 275). Lowie (2009) was more radical arguing that totemism did not exist and for all intense and purpose was an invention of anthropologists.

Durkheim in his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915) presented the most influential interpretation of religion from a functionalist perspective stating society was the soul of religion and was the foundation of all religious beliefs. Durkheim (1961) said all societies divide the world into two categories: the sacred and the profane. Religion is centred on this division; it is a ‘unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things, things which are set apart and forbidden’ (Haralambos, 2001, p. 432). Thus to comprehend the role of religion in society, the connection concerning sacred symbols and what they signify must be determined.

Durkheim used the religion of Australian aborigines in order to explain his theory. Durkheim referred to their religion as totemism stating it was the most basic and simplest form of religion. Aboriginal civilisations were divided into numerous clans each having duties and obligations towards their members, one of which is exogamy, where members are not allowed to marry within their clan. Each clan has a totem usually that of an animal or plant which is the emblem of the clan, a sign where each clan can distinguish itself from the others. The totem is the most sacred object in aborigine ritual. The totem is ‘the outward and visible form of the totemic principle of god’ (ibid, p. 432). Durkheim argued ‘if the totem is the symbol of god and society, therefore society and god are one. So people who are worshipping god are in fact worshipping society therefore, society is the real object of religious worship. Sacred things are ‘considered superior in dignity and power to the profane and particularly to man, thus, in relation to sacred things individuals are inferior and dependent’ (p.432).

Durkheim said primitive man came to view society as something sacred because he is totally dependent on it. Furthermore, Durkheim argued ‘the reason why society invents a sacred symbol like a totem is because it is easier for a person to visualise and direct his feelings of awe toward a symbol than towards so complex a thing as a clan’ (ibid, p.433). Durkheim believed in the collective conscience a set of shared values and moral beliefs, religion reinforces the collective conscience. The worship of society strengthens the values and moral beliefs that form the basis of social life. However, Goldenweiser (1910) said:

“The appearance of Durkheim’s brilliant but unconvincing treatise on religion brings home the fact that one of the phases of socio-religious thought, namely the problem of totemism, remains as replete with vagueness and misunderstanding as ever” (ibid, p.288)

Boas (1916) ‘aiming at Durkheim as much as Frazer, denied that cultural phenomena could be bought together into a unity’ (Levi-Strauss, 1969, p. 79).

British anthropologists were less ready to give up on the concept of totemism. Malinowski (1925) gives an uncomplicated analysis of totemism relating to the function it has in a given society. Totemism plays a significant role in the ‘ordering and control of nature by man’ (ibid, p. 22-23). The kind of man’s attention in the totemic species ‘shows also the kind of belief and cult to be there expected. Since it is the desire to control the species, dangerous, useful or edible, this desire must lead to a belief in special power over the species, affinity with it, a common essence between man and beast or plant’ (Malinowski, 1954, p. 45). Totemism as a style of social organisation maintains the status quo in society while as the same time serving as man’s interests in a much deeper way:

“From the survival point of view, it is vital that man’s interest in the practically indispensable species should never abate, that his belief in his capacity to control them should give him strength and endurance in his pursuits and stimulate his observations and knowledge of the habits and natures of animals and plants” (ibid, p. 46)

A criticism of Malinowski is ‘he is guilty of operating entirely within the world of nature and his theory leaves us to explain why totemism, if it responds to human needs is not universal (Leach, 1969, p. 130). Evans-Pritchard (1951) said, ‘Malinowski’s theoretical conclusions are no more than descriptions in more abstract language’ (p.95).

Radcliffe- Brown (1929) explored totemism from a structural functionalist perspective; he did not attempt to understand totemism in terms of beliefs, but as a collection of practices that serve to uphold the solidarity and equilibrium of the social group. Radcliffe- Brown described totemism as that circumstance whereupon:

“Society is divided into groups and there is a special relation between each group and one or more classes of objects that are usually natural species of animals and plants but may occasionally be artificial objects or parts of an animal” (Radcliffe-Brown 1965, p. 117).

Radcliffe-Brown (1965) said totemic objects are objects which have been accorded ritual value (ibid, p. 123) and he argues that:

“Any object or event which has important effects upon the well-being (material or spiritual) of a society, or anything which stands for or represents any such object or event, tends to become an object of the ritual attitude” (Radcliffe-Brown 1965, p. 129).

Here, Radcliffe-Brown comes really near to the utilitarian theories offered by Frazer and Malinowski however; this hypothesis does little to the general understanding of why particular plants and animal species have such a high ritual significance. In a further essay Radcliffe-Brown (1956) highlighted the significance of the conclusions about the relations between humans and animals. Moreover, after listening and examining stories told about animals by Australian aborigines, Radcliffe-Brown concluded they had one theme, and added ‘the resemblances and differences of animal species are translated into terms of friendship and conflict, solidarity and opposition’ Radcliffe-Brown, 1958, p. 116). Overall concluding, ‘the world of animal life is represented in terms of social relations similar to those of human society’ (Radcliffe-Brown, 1958, p.116). Radcliffe-Brown proposed the central terms in his version of totemism are opposition and integration adding Totemism stopped being a type of religion but was instead a mode of thought where nature had become an ‘object of contemplation for the expression of socio-cultural differences’ (Tremlett, 2008, p.47). Radcliffe-brown’s previous idea that ‘objects become totems because they are of ritual interest to society can be turned around: why are they not of ritual interest because they have been designated as totems’? (ibid, p.130). Questions have been asked about the integrity of his studies because some anthropologists have accused him of appropriating other people’s research and passing it off as his own.

The Australian anthropologist Elkin (1933) said there are many forms of totemism in Australia specifically:

“Individual, sex, moiety, section, subsection, matrilineal and patrilineal social clans, localised cult clan and dream-totemism. Elkin denied the unity of totemism but sought to preserve its reality on the condition that he might trace it back to a multiplicity of types he stated there is no longer ‘one totemism but many totemisms, each in itself a single irreducible whole” (p.113).

Elkin (1933) denied ‘the unity in totemism as if he thought it possible to preserve the reality of totemism on condition that it be reduced to a multiplicity of heterogeneous forms’ (Levi-Strauss, 1969, p. 35). For Elkin (1933) there is no longer one totemism but many totemisms, each in itself a single complex whole. Levi-Strauss (1962a) says Elkin ‘instead of helping to slay the hydra (of totemism) has dismembered it and made peace with the bits’ (ibid, p.66).

Evans Pritchard in his book on Nuer religion (1956) regarded totemism as ‘a symbolic formulation of intellectually constructed relationships, (Strauss, 1962. p. 27). He wanted to comprehend totemism in terms of extensive Nuer Beliefs about Kwoth which stands for “God” or “Spirit”; there were two manifestations of spirit, higher and lower, with the totemic spirit being the ‘spirit of the below’. Evans Pritchard noted that Nuer totems were not symbols of linages, because some linages had none and other linages shared the same totem but did not otherwise acknowledge kinship with each-other. Nor did the totems signify Spirit as such, but rather the connection between God and a specific linage. So, such a study fixed totemism within the religious beliefs and practices of a particular society.

Levi-Strauss was very critical of the reality of totemism for him ‘the ‘totemic illusion’ is the product of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century effort by scientists to relegate the primitive outside the realm of culture’ (Leach, 1962, p. 127) because they wanted to ‘protect the Victorian world-view by maintaining the Christian distinction between man and nature, thus, by failing to recognise the similarities between Western and primitive codes, scholars created false taxonomies and blurred the universal logic behind all so-called totemic phenomena’ (ibid, p. 127). Levi-Strauss was inspired by Radcliffe-Brown, whose analyses he attempted to expand upon. Levi-Strauss was ‘the leading academic in contemporary structuralism believing human minds have certain universal characteristics which originate in the common feature of the homo-sapiens brain’ (Haralambos, 2001, p. 910). These common mental structures lead people everywhere to think similarly regardless of their society or cultural background. Levi-Strauss developed a system to show the abstract divisions that he saw in totemism as a phenomenon in human nature. His system was implemented in a table of oppositions or mutual relationships. The basic relationship was between the binary opposites such as nature and culture. On one side there were in nature certain realities such as species of animal, or plants and specific animals and plants. On the other side, there was in culture various groups and individuals who identify themselves with particular species or with specific animal and plants. Levi-Strauss (1962a) noticed four types of relationship between nature and culture within totemism:

“A species of animal or plant identified with a certain group; a species identified with an individual and finally a particular animal or plant identified with a group of animal or plant identified with an individual, a particular animal or plant’ (p.18).

Levi-Strauss (1969) stated each of these four groupings ‘correspond to the phenomena that are to be seen in one people to another’ (ibid. 84). For the first grouping he suggested the Australians, for whom ‘natural entities are linked with cultural groups (p.84); the second grouping was ‘the individual totemism of North American Indians where an individual is linked with a species of nature’ (p.84). The third grouping the ‘Mota people from the Bank Irelands of Melanesia named: a child is thought to be the incarnation of a specific animal, plant or creature which was found and eaten by the mother when she first found out she was pregnant(p.84). The final groupings were from ‘Polynesia or Africa where fixed individual animals formed the groups support and worshbluefrost13ip’ (p.84). In conclusion Levi-Strauss stated the difference between the classes of man and animal serves as the conceptual basis for social differences. Thus, for Levi-Strauss totemism is an ‘illusion’ and a logic that ‘classifies’- a post hoc explanation in which the structure of social relations is projected onto the natural phenomena, not taken from it.

In conclusion, totemism is a belief system where the traits in the social organisation of people are believed to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being such as an animal or plant which serves as the group or individual’s emblem or symbol. As anthropology tries to understand different cultures and provides knowledge about cultural variation in the world through details studies anthropologist would find totemism an interesting topic which has been proved by the number of studies which have been discussed. The first study on totemism was undertaken my McLennan in (1889) who explored the origin of totemism. Boas (1916) studied American Indians and their totem poles, concluding the totem poles functioned as the emblem of the clan showing unity and the rights each clan was entitled to. Frazer (1919) gave the first comprehensive work on totemism; he came up with three theories the final of which saw the origin of totemism as an interpretation of the conception and birth of children a belief he called conceptionalism. Durkheim (1915) hoped to discover a pure religion in a very ancient form and claimed to see the origin of religion in totemism. In 1925 Malinowski explored totemism as a function in a given society. Radcliffe-Brown (1929) researched from a structural functionalist perspective explored how totemism upheld the solidarity of the social group. Elkin (1933) explored numerous forms of totemism. Evans-Pritchard (1956) explored Nuer religion and the symbolic nature of totemism. The final theory discussed on totemism was by Levi-Strauss (1962a/1969) who explored totemism from a structuralist perspective. He gave the most incisive critique of totemism by denying its reality stating totemism is an illusion. Investigations of totemism has decline in recent times, those which have been undertaken have moved away from its universality toward explorations which consider totem structures in a more precise context.

Romantic relationships are characterized by feelings of passion, emotional reactions and physical attraction; and platonic relationships are characterized by the absence of physical attraction, passion or sex (Sippola, 1999). These two characterizations are very important for the scope of this paper because both are crucial to answer the question, “Can men and women really be just friends?” In the magazine Psychology Today, Clifford Lazarus wrote an article with an explanation to this question. Lazarus contends, for the most part, purely platonic relationships for heterosexual men and women are a myth (Lazarus, 2010). To support his contention, he refers to the reflexive nature of men and the reflective nature of women.

Lazarus refers to a sexual desirability reflex, which men demonstrate towards women in prime reproductive age. This reflex suggests the immediate thoughts of males when first encountering females are whether or not he would like to have sex with her (Lazarus, 2010). Although, it is argued that females may exhibit the same thoughts, although not as frequently as with males, they tend to quickly move past this reflex. On the other hand, women generally want to determine the suitability of a potential partner. This suitability is referred to as a desire to look for potential long term, socioeconomic stability with a partner (Canary & Dindia, 1998). Women therefore, tend to be more sexually reflective and choosier than males, while males tend to be more sexually reflexive than women.

These reflexive and reflective drives can be linked to evolutionary theories. Males have an indefinite amount of sperm while females only have a predetermined amount of eggs for her life span (Lazarus, 2010). This suggests an explanation of why males may exhibit the above mentioned reflex more than females, and why females exhibit a determinable reflective drive. This article therefore concludes that purely platonic relationships in cross-sex friendships do not exist. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the conclusion of the Psychology Today article with scholarly research to determine if purely platonic cross-sex friendships can exist between heterosexual men and women.

It is important to indicate that the article’s conclusion assumes that a purely platonic relationship exists when both people in the relationship have never considered having a romantic relationship with each other. Through sexually charged flirtatious behavior and evolutionary theories, the first part of this paper will provide support for the article’s conclusion that purely platonic cross-sex friendships are not possible. However, the second part of this paper will present evidence denouncing the preceding hypothesis by means of costs, romantic intentions and reasons to stay platonic.

Flirtatious Behavior

Both romantic and platonic relationships report flirtatious activity although frequencies in flirtatious behavior may differ (Egland, Spitzberg, & Zormeier, 1996). Some examples of flirtatious behaviors include looking your friend or partner up and down, gazing in their eyes and smiling suggestively. When comparing results of the platonic cross-sex relationships to the romantic cross-sex relationships, platonic relationships engaged in flirtatious activity nearly as much as romantic relationships (Egland, et al., 1996). This finding bolsters the view that even in platonic relationships, flirtatious behavior is expressed.

Furthermore, flirtatious behavior may be sexually charged. According to Henningsen, Braz, and Davies (2008), people engage in flirtatious behavior for six main reasons. First is sexual motivation, referring to one’s desires to engage in sexual acts. Second, an individual may be relationally motivated, with the intention of moving from a platonic relationship to a romantic relationship. Third is fun motivation, referring to flirting to gain sexual excitement or thrill. Fourth is exploring motivation, referring to flirtatious behavior of platonic relationships to explore and see if positive feedback comes from the other person. Fifth is esteem motivation, which remarks on how gaining positive feedback from flirting may boost self esteem or arousal. And finally people flirt for instrumental motivation, which is flirting for possible access to rewards.

Flirting is the primary apparatus to signal sexual and romantic accessibility (Guererro & Chavez, 2005). All of the reasons people may flirt are charged with motives other than being platonic. Flirtation can be described as a “subcategory of social-sexual communication” (Henningsen, et al., 2008, p. 2). These social-sexual communications carry the connotation of being sexually charged, suggesting one person may have had sexual or romantic thoughts at one point in time in the relationship. This suggests that flirting is associated with sexual desire, or reasons other than what constitutes a platonic friendship (Henningsen, Braz, & Davies, 2008).

Flirtatious behavior is often intended to be interpreted in a way that carries sexual motive (Henningsen, et al., 2008). This implies that those in platonic relationships have an intended purpose or conscious motive to engage in it. For instance, platonic relationships that do not want to turn romantic voluntarily do not engage in flirtatious behavior (Guerrero & Mongeau, 2008). This suggests that platonic relationships may be conscious of flirting, thus indicating that people engage in flirting through a particular motivation; in these instances a sexually charged motivation. Since platonic relationships do engage in flirtatious behavior with one another, there is reason to believe that the flirtatious behavior is sexually charged

Furthermore, men may interpret expressed behavior from women differently than from what women intend. If women are not voluntarily trying to give flirtatious signals or signs of flirtatious behavior, men are much more readily apparent to interpret non-flirtatious signals as flirtatious (Canary & Dindia, 1998). Therefore, even in an apparently platonic friendship, men may be misinterpreting these non-flirtatious signals as flirtatious, and therefore sexual as well, even if there is no intension to communicate flirtatious behavior. This implies even in some apparently platonic relationships, certain behaviors may signal signs of sexual desire unintentionally. CHECK THESE PRECEDING 3 PARAGRAPHS

Evolutionary Views

According to evolutionary theories, flirtatious behavior is contingent upon a desire to procreate (Canary & Dindia, 1998). As mentioned in the article, men have a type of reflexive drive and women have a type of reflective drive (Lazarus, 2010). From an evolutionary stance, a look into interactions between men and women will reinforce these reflexive and reflective drives.

Reflective and Reflexive Behavior

Women are more likely to choose a partner or mate who exhibits status and resources, therefore being more reflective than males (Lazarus, 2010). Women are generally more interested in men with high resource potential (Canary & Dindia, 1998). This indicates why women focus on a long term stable relationship; one which is able to support their offspring. On the other hand, men are much more likely to approach women who display more signs of flirtatious behavior (Canary & Dindia, 1998). This indicates men’s reflexive drive, indicating sexual thoughts or interest upon initial encounters (Lazarus, 2010).

Interests of men and women vary depending on age group. Males prefer younger women, while women prefer older males as age ascends. Women tend to be more fertile when they are younger, while men tend to be more economically sufficient and successful as they grow older (Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009). This suggests men being more concerned with the fertility of women by preferring younger mates, while women reported being more concerned with male socioeconomic status, indicated by selecting older men (Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009).

Parental Investment Theory

Additionally, the female perception of older males having the resources to provide for their offspring and males having the impression to mate with a fertile female is consistent with the evolutionary theory of parental investments. Under parental investment theory, the investments of men and women differ. For example, a women needs to carry the offspring. On the other hand, men could technically end their investment of the offspring immediately after conception. As referenced by Tafoya (2006), women’s potential for reproduction after conception is inhibited, while on the other hand men as quoted by Lazarus (2010), have their sperm “constantly replenished.” Furthermore, because of the paternity uncertainty hypothesis, a man can never know with absolute certainty that a child is his. On the contrary, even though the mother may not know who the father of her child is, this hypothesis holds that she will know for certain that she will pass her genes on to her offspring (Tafoya, 2006).

Considering this hypothesis and the theory of parental investments, the reflexive nature of men and reflective nature of women are explained. A male’s reflexive drive can be explained since males never know if the child is theirs with absolute certainty and their investment need not go beyond conception (Tafoya, 2006). Therefore, males seem to exhibit lesser commitment, reinforcing their reflexive tendencies. Additionally, men are more likely to accept a short term mate of any overall quality than women. For instance, it is more probable that men rather than women select a short term mate whose overall qualities such as wealth, status and attractiveness are lacking. Men are also more likely than women to have a one night stand or participate in an affair (Li & Kenrick, 2006).

On the other hand, women know their genes will be passed on and are making more of a sacrifice from an evolutionary standpoint by the cessation of their potential reproduction. This indicates that females may be more selective about their mates as indicated in the article by reflective drives. Furthermore, women prefer resources and status when looking for a short term mate more than males. In fact, women prefer the same qualities in their short term mates as they do in their long term mates (Li & Kenrick, 2006). This implies women exemplify this reflective drive in support of a potential parental investor, that being the potential mate. It is shown that mating as well as parenting is essential to success of offspring, which helps to explain the characteristics of these reflexive and reflective drives (Tafoya, 2006). However, evolutionary views not limited to parental investment theory.

Friends with Benefits and Biosocial Theory

Evolutionary theories are evident in friends with benefits relationships. Friends with benefits refer to non-romantic or platonic relationships who engage in sexual activities (McGinty, Knox, & Zusman, 2007). Friends with benefits is not just a trend, but also is commonly engaged in. Nearly 60% of undergraduates reported having had an experience with a friends with benefits relationship (McGinty et al., 2007). This reinforces the instinctive sexual activity and sexual behavior with the opposite sex. Biosocial theory of evolution may inquire more deeply as to why friends with benefits occurs.

Biosocial Theory predicts human behavior by looking to a person’s genetic predisposition and their environment. Women show to be more emotionally involved in a friend with benefits relationship than men. Because women emphasize emotional attachment, it is argued that women do so in order to have a stable relationship (McGinty et al., 2007). In having a stable relationship, women need to rear their offspring, thus suggesting why women are more emotionally concerned with friends with benefits relationships than men. On the other hand, men are more sexually focused with the relationship. At times, men are shown to be involved in multiple friends with benefits relationships, thus strengthening the point that men exhibit a reflexive drive (McGinty et al., 2007).

Furthermore, Schneider & Kenny (2000) surveyed how rewarding and costly people see an opposite-sex platonic friendship. Sexual access was reported as a potential benefit of being in a cross-sex friendship, as well as a reported cost. For example, men may be friends with women as a means to gain sexual access, however, men report having less sexual access than women. This suggests men are more concerned with sexual access than women (Bleske & Buss, 2000). This reinforces the idea of the reflexive nature of men.

However, women are reported to be benefited when protected by an opposite sex friend. Though this is not shown to what extent this suggests a positive cue for women as mate potential, it has been suggested in a comparative study that males who protect their friends actually gain more sexual access. This was evident in a study of baboons, where the males protect the feeding grounds, and in return the female gives them periodic sexual access; therefore suggesting men’s evolutionary drive for protecting women (Bleske & Buss, 2000).

Flirtatious behavior and evolutionary views support the reflexive and reflective tendencies of males and females, respectively. This suggests that men and women in platonic cross-sex friendships engage in sexually charged behavior. The preceding information also supports, as the article contends, that platonic relationships may not be feasible simply because of evolutionary drives (Lazarus, 2010).

Although these findings reinforce the idea that purely platonic relationships do not exist, there is information to believe otherwise. The following research in categories of similar costs, romantic intent, and reasons to stay platonic indicate evidence against the preceding research, contending there may be reasons platonic relationships can exist without having intent for or a transition to romantic relationships.

Similar Costs and Status

Males and Females do not differ in how costly it is to be denied sex from the person in the friendship; the potential for rejection is perceived as low in cost for both sexes (Bleske & Buss, 2000). This suggests that men and women may be able to be friends without worrying about sexual access. However, this information does support males and/or females think about sex. Since the potential cost for rejection was low, this implies the male and females evaluated each other before making the decision to become romantic (Bleske & Buss, 2000). Therefore, this seems to be more closely related to the conclusion in the article, and more supportive of reflexive and reflective behavior than not.

Even so, the status of the relationship may have an effect on the friendship. Although, ex-romantic partners report wanting a platonic relationship to turn romantic once again, a friend who has always been platonic would not want the relationship to turn romantic (Schneider & Kenny, 2000). This indicates that how a relationship is initiated may have an actual impact on the relationship. Platonic friendships therefore, may exist depending on past experiences with the individual. This undermines the contention that platonic cross-sex friendships can never be platonic, since past experience can have an impact.

Romantic Intent

Romantic intent was not classified in the above article Why Men and Women Can’t be “Just Friends”. Romantic intent can vary and impact relationships differently. In the strictly platonic relationships, cross-sex friends reported less contact, flirtation and activity compared to romantic relationships. Arguably, strictly platonic friendships do not flirt, touch and spend as much time with one another relative to mutually romantic relationships, possibly because doing so may jeopardize the friendship (Guererro & Chavez, 2005). Furthermore, long term strictly platonic friendships can move past initial romantic intent. Friendships in the long term are shown to use maintenance behaviors such as less contact and flirtation as a means to not potentially ruin the platonic friendship (Guererro & Chavez, 2005). These finding suggests strictly platonic and mutually romantic relationships do vary with romantic intent, and thus may not perceive one another as anything more than platonic friends.

Reasons to Remain Platonic

There are six motives as to why relationships should remain platonic. To safeguard the relationship, lack of or no attraction, network disapproval, third party, risk aversion and timeout. This order with safeguarding the relationship being most important implies that there is an intrinsic reason for relationships to remain purely platonic. The rewarding nature of the relationship may be seen as more rewarding than a relationship moving towards one that is romantic or sexual. For instance, a reward in a platonic relationship is the ability to share emotion and/ or gain support about external situations; the ability to disclose in the relationship. On the other hand, less rewarding factors may direct people to remain platonic as well. For example, one may feel that the friend in the relationship is not attractive, or one may not want to expose oneself to possible emotional instability (Messman, Canary, & Hause, 2000). Thus, research suggests cross-sex platonic relationships may have strong reasons for existing.

Furthermore, all platonic friendships may not be sexually charged. The sexual challenge in cross-sex friendships, which refers to men and women being hardwired to be sexually attracted to one another, is said to only occur in a minority of cross-sex friendships. Furthermore, the sexual challenge may be linked to attraction of the spirit, rather than of the body. Thus, reinforcing that sexual challenges may not be accurately represented when referring to the sexual desire of men and women (Messman et al., 2000).

Conclusion

Flirtatious behavior and evolutionary theories strongly support the idea that there cannot be purely platonic relationships as indicated in the article. However, alternative research suggests platonic friendships may be possible; similar costs, subjective romantic intent, and reasons to remain reasons to remain platonic are evidence that friendships have some incentive to remain purely platonic. Although there is support for both sides, the underlying question is whether men and women together can have purely platonic friendships. Flirtatious behaviors as well as the evolutionary theories of biosocial and parental investment demonstrate that cross-sex platonic friendships are challenging. The majority of the information in the Why Men and Women Can’t be “Just Friends” article does give credence to the majority of these findings.

Although in light of these findings, the article seems to be narrow in its evaluation. The main point of the article contends that platonic relationships do not exist because of evolutionary reasoning based on reflexive and reflective drives (Lazarus, 2010). On the other hand, the article does not account for romantic intent, a significant part of relationships. The article assumes based on the first meeting of men and women that there are uncontrollable biological reactions which occur. Although these reactions tend to happen, the article should still account for the past and present status of the relationship, as well as each person’s intent to whether or not they want a platonic or romantic friendship. Since the article fails to account for this romantic intent of a males and females, it therefore neglects the possibility of differences in perception; that is, how people view each other based on their past experience with that person (Messman et al., 2000).

Moreover, long term platonic friendships vary in their romantic intent depending if maintenance behaviors are used. For instance, in a relationship that has always been platonic, both persons will use more maintenance behaviors to preserve their platonic friendship, in order to safeguard the friendship from moving towards romanticism. However, maintenance behaviors are also shown not to be useful. For instance, one of the people in the relationship may be denied a desired sexual progression (Guererro & Chavez, 2005).

Although there can be changes made to the article, the underlying argument is supported by the majority of research. Assuming a purely platonic relationship to be a cross-sex friendship where neither party has the thought of addressing a romantic relationship, or having desire for sexual activities; the existence of purely platonic relationships is slim. Platonic relationships engaging in flirtatious behavior carry a sexual connotation (Egland, et al., 1996). This implies that males and females even in platonic relationships may exhibit these reflexive and reflective drives. Furthermore, the differing parental investments for males and females bolster the sentiment regarding reflexive and reflective drives; this concerns why males invest less in their relationships while females invest more in their relationships (Li & Kenrick, 2006; Tafoya, 2006). Additionally, the biosocial theory suggests evolutionary underpinnings consistent with reflexive and reflective behavior; these include sexual behavior in friends with benefits relationships and behaviors of rewards and costs. Therefore, the article and the preceding findings suggest that the existences of purely platonic cross-sex heterosexual relationships are unlikely.

Part of the current feminism strive is to raise awareness of what is known as rape culture. Rape culture is a socially constructed concept that depicts a culture in which sexual violence and rape are belittled, tolerated, and even justified in society. This concept is related to some specific behaviors such as women’s causal role, rape stereotypes, sexual objectification, and trivialization of rape along with sexual discrimination.

Legally, rape is defined as forced sexual intercourse between a man and a woman against the woman’s will (or the man’s). In many states, the legal definition of rape does not include marital rape. In others terms, husbands which force their wives into sex are not punished by law, as rape is only seen as “illegitimate” sexual intercourse, i.e., the wife’s exception implies that “rape is rape” if and only if the man commits the act on a woman other than his wife. This would suggest that sexual violence is not always considered as an act of rape. Even more, this implies that the law might consider sexual assaults as tolerable. For a forced sexual act to be sanctioned as rape, the man should not have conjugal rights over the woman. In other terms, the law’s acceptance of a violent sexual act depends on the relationship between the victim and her rapist.

According to the feminists’ rape culture theory, sexist behaviors contribute to the normalization of sexual assaults towards women. The root of rape culture is -according to the theory- the objectification and domination of women in a highly patriarchal society. Rape culture exists today because of the socially constructed image of sex as being an act of male domination over women. It is the traditional perception of how men and women are to behave which is the cause of rape being so trivialized. Men are expected to have sexual dominance in the relationship whereas women are pictured as passive, subordinate creatures.

The contrast between men and women in the socially constructed sexual culture can be seen in dating for instance. In a date, a man is expected to buy gifts, dinner, drive the date of/from location to location and shower the woman with attention. Society has accustomed men to expect sexual rewards for their actions. The man thinks he has a right to sexual favors because of what he did on the date. This reasoning puts women as legitimate for sexual aggressions, and gives justifications for men to reason what they might do. When society produces rapists by encouraging values such as domination, anger, aggression, violence and rejecting the idea of men expressing and sharing their feelings, it fosters a rape culture.

The rapists are also victims in the sense that they are frustrated by not being able to nurture their need for love and affection through more normal, healthier ways; hence acting through violence. [1]

Social conditioning through media holds a huge part of responsibility in rape culture oriented societies. Men and women are made to behave and think in a very specific way from a very early age through school and popular culture. Women and girls should act properly and in a “ladylike” manner, men should be strong and unemotional. This socialization process, this distribution of roles and behaviors creates the imbalance of power between men and women, giving the floor to male domination over female subordination, and indirectly training women how to be raped, and men how to be rapists.

Some rules which train women “how to be ladies” actually contribute to a lot of rape situations. For instance, a “lady” should not make a scene just because she is at discomfort. During a sexual assault, wouldn’t this entitle that the woman should stay quiet, in order to preserve ladylike qualities? A “lady” should always trust and be kind to strangers which offer to help. This rule gives rapists plenty of situations where they can trick women into thinking that they are actually willing to help them whilst having planned the rape act. Another rule claims that a “lady” should always graciously smile when spoken to. A potential rapist might consider a woman acknowledging him with a smile as her being consenting to the situation.

Social conditioning has also leaded us to deem as true a set of prejudicial beliefs, called rape myths. These stereotypes provide aggressors with justifications and legitimization for their acts of sexual violence. Feminists claim that rape myths are fundamental to the patriarchal society which supports control and domination relationships. Not only do those stereotypes and lies present assaulters with excuses for their acts, but they also move the responsibility of the act away from the aggressors and lay it on the victims.

Some examples of rape myths include: “Black men rape white women”, “Provocative female clothing is the cause of rape”, “it’s the victim’s fault”, “She was asking for it”… Even more dangerous is women’s acceptance as the ones to blame for rape and the hostility some women show towards other women which were rape victims, by saying and believing in claims such as “She provoked the rape”, “Men are unable to control themselves”, “rape is only perpetrated by sick men”. [2]

The new trend nowadays, and from what I hear around me when I ask people about the causal role of women in a rape situation is to say that women should not dress in an alluring way then blame men for raping them. Society is full of sick men, and women should be prepared for this. Raped women actually “had it coming”.

A study done in Germany where participants (students) were given a set of questions, tried to measure to which extent rape myths were accepted and it tried to study the correlation between the desire for sexual dominance and the inclination to accept rape and rape myths. The results of this study supported the feminist theory which claims that rape is much more linked to the desire for men to express their dominance and control over women than to simple sexual arousal. [3]

There are three main theories which suggest different factors as support for the proliferation of rape culture.

The first theory, gender disparity, claims that rape is the main instrument for patriarchal societies to keep oppression and control. As discussed earlier, the imbalance of power in the relationship between men and women is a direct cause of the objectification and subordination of women versus the domination and demonstration of force of men, which encourages rapist behavior.

The second theory, cultural overflow, claims that rape myths and gender socialization are not the only causes for sexual violence, as other components of culture might serve to justify and trivialize rape. An example would be the aspects of violence in our everyday life. Violence in schools, in media, and in governments can be generalized or extended to relationships, thus condoning rape acts.

The third theory, social disturbance, suggests that elevated rates of rape might reflect disturbance in social lives such as divorce and relocation. A generalization of the theory would be that deviant acts in general mirror social disorganization which disturbs commonly agreed on social mores. [4]

Although I agree with the fact that feminists have done well in raising awareness against rape in societies, and (to some extent) to how society might have contributed to the increase of rape rates through popular culture and mass media, I think there are some issues with rape culture as an entity proposed by traditional feminists.

Traditional feminists’ rape culture theory mainly insists on gender imbalance as being the cause of rape proliferation in society. However, and as the cultural overflow theory suggests, other factors and other components might cause increase in rape rates.

The war in Bosnia (92-95) was infamously known for wartime rape. Many Muslim women in Bosnia were raped by Serbs at the time. Rape becomes a weapon of war in this case. It is not intentionally or (at the least solely) directed towards the individual victim, but rather used as any other tool to hurt the enemy.

The rape during the Yugoslav conflicts was consequently labeled as “genocide rape” or “rape warfare”. Many examples in India, South Asian, and Middle Eastern and South African countries show similar patterns where the culture of war and violence tends to lead to a tacit acceptance of rape in society. [5]

Rape as a war weapon can be much more effective than any other weapon as the lasting effects of such an act not only hurt the individual on the long term but the society as a whole. Through children born in time of rape warfare, the society is relentlessly reminded of the war and the enemy. It is one of the most degrading and brutal attacks that could be carried on the enemy. Victims of rape in war time live in isolation from their family and community, especially if they have a child born from the rape act. [6]

Another issue with the traditionalist feminist view on rape is the binary structure and the rather monolithic perspective on the matter. There is this tendency to represent men as evil animalistic rapist creatures and women as helpless submissive victims.

The feminist cause is first and foremost a fight for equality. As a movement which condemns rape as a result of gender inequality, the irony here is the separation between genders which label the man as a rapist and the woman as a victim. The theory depicts all men as potential rapists and sex offenders, controlling and dominant. Across my research, I noticed that most of the literature on rape culture only highlights female oriented violence. Such discrepancy makes it appear as if male oriented violence does not exist, and that female victims are much more prevalent. Such unfairness in research contributes to the rigid binary representation of the matter.

The danger in doing such propaganda (i.e. labeling all men are potential sexual aggressors) makes it sound as if being a man is enough to identify the person as someone likely to rape. Even the definitions I encountered on feminist blogs and journals define rape as the act of sexual violence towards a woman by a man without her consent, but not vice versa. A similar distortion can be seen when talking about domestic violence as it is now assumed and taken for granted that men are wife beaters. While feminism’s original strive is to gain and maintain equality between the genders, rape culture theories create a serious loophole as such distortions and discrepancies actually put women as the harmless gender on higher grounds for moral superiority in comparison with men as the harmful gender, which creates gender imbalance all over again.

By acting as such, feminists work against their goal of gender equality. It is not the battle for equal rights anymore; it is the fight for moral superiority that is at stake here.

Hence as much as rape culture following the feminist view trivializes and encourages rape, rape culture also benefits this feminist view itself of men being animalistic and unable to control their urges in comparison with women because, somehow, it puts women as the “species” in control of their instincts, the civilized ones, while men are pictured as helpless uncontrollable creatures. The situation is reversed. Men become the persecuted gender in a way.

A third issue with rape culture is the labeling itself of the entity. What does rape culture exactly encapsulates? There is a concern that the focus of feminists on rape culture might exclude other abused victims which were not subject to rape but other types of sexual violence.

For instance, domestic violence victims’ doesn’t necessarily mean rape victims. Aren’t those women excluded from the movement because of the fact that they were not raped? Sexually harassed women are not necessarily raped too, where do they stand in the rape culture movement? By choosing a label and identifying an entity such as rape culture, Rape acquires a special place in the feminist movement, as women who were raped gain a unique status which makes them a priority over other women.

The problem here is that, by giving rape this privileged status, by making the focus rape and rape culture, the feminist movement creates this gender-separatist, discriminatory entity which shadows other gender related issues. Other society problems are as important as the rape issue, yet we do not have a “child molesting culture” entity for instance.

Furthermore, one can actually draw a pattern of similarities between the feminist’ rape culture movement and the traditional white feminist movement, because both are discriminatory in a way. The white feminist movement does not represent black and Latino women for instance. Similarly, rape culture feminists do not represent battered women or women who were not raped but were still victims of sexual harassment.

Rape culture oriented feminism does have some good arguments as socially constructed behaviors and gender roles do impact on rape behaviors. However, and to draw the analogy with the white feminist movement, victimized women which were raped as a product of the imbalance of power between men and women in society represent only a small part of the rape victims and situations, as much as white desperate housewives with college degrees who are forced to stay at home only represent a small portion of oppressed women.

Just as white feminism should evolve to include other women in the group, rape culture oriented feminism should also change by broadening its area of interest and not limiting itself only to first: physically raped victims and second : physically raped victims outside the sample society provided by rape culture oriented feminism. Wartime rape victims, which are ignored by this feminist movement currently should also be part of the strive. Furthermore, the movement should also reconsider the monolithic view it gives of society which separates men and women in a negative way. Rape culture oriented literature so far is very biased in terms of who does the aggressions. It should also recognize that not all men are aggressors, because of the unfairness and incorrectness of such accusation, and move towards a more cooperative image between the genders rather than the hatred one it currently gives.

Work cited:

Herman, Dianne F. “The Rape Culture”. In Women, A Feminist Perspective, edited by Jo Freeman, 45 – 53. Mayfield: Mountain View CA, 1984.

Sparkleallday. “Defining A Rape Culture”. Accessed November 28, 2012. http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.

Anderson, Janet. “Rape Myths”. Research & Advocacy Digest. 9 (2007): 10-21.

Baron, Larry. “Four Theories of Rape: A Macrosociological Analysis”. Social Problems. 34 (1987).

Hayden, Robert M. Rape and Rape Avoidance in Ethno-National Conflicts: Sexual Violence in Liminalized States”. American Anthropologist 102 (2000): 27 – 41.

Clifford, Cassandra. “Rape as a Weapon of War and its Long-term Effects on Victims and Society”. Paper presented at the 7th Global Conference of Violence and the Contexts of Hostility, Budapest, Hungary May 5-7, 2008.

Slavery and segregation played a major role in the amount of racism and inequalities in America. During slavery times, Whites had the power to purchase Blacks and land. If the Blacks were fortunate enough to be able to accumulate the money, they were able to purchase their and their families freedom. (Oliver and Shapiro 278, 1995) However, this seldom occurred due to the fact that it was very hard for Blacks to gain any money while in slavery. During the Jim Crow segregation in the south, there were laws prohibiting Blacks from operating businesses on an open market, meaning that they were not allowed to sell their products to Whites. (Bobo and Smith 187, 1998) They were at a disadvantage because they could not make the profit that they deserved simply due to their skin color. After the segregation, Whites were still not willing to help out and purchase from Black businesses. Because of this, Blacks were forced to focus mainly on selling to the Black community. Since the Blacks were very limited on what they could sell, this caused them to be more like a consumer than an owner. Since past generations of Blacks had to endure this racism and inequality, their poverty has been passed down from generation to generation; families have been unable to or struggling to get out of the debt of their ancestors. Each disadvantage that the Black community as a whole has had to endure has accumulated over time creating the sedimentation of inequality. Whites have gained more advantages over time simply resulting from the disadvantages that the Blacks have gone through.

The restriction of access to schools, jobs, healthcare, and public services are products of segregation. The freedom of choice restricted from the Blacks has been legally sound while progressing through the centuries but has always been immoral. In 1988, only 50% of White Americans favored a law prohibiting racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals. (Farley and Squires 221, 2005) Housing policies, programs, and practices have played a large role in the gap of wealth between Blacks and Whites. In 1939, the FHA manual prohibited granting loans to families due to race. (Fischer 140, 1996) This meant that they didn’t want to ‘disrupt the racial integrity’ of a neighborhood. They wanted neighborhoods to be occupied by the same racial and social classes to ‘retain stability’. During the 1940’s, the FHA recommended that developers use covenants that were racially restrictive to ‘protect’ from people of color. (Fischer 140, 1996) Because of this, Blacks and other people of color could not buy homes in most of the neighborhoods that Whites lived in; the middle class communities. In the 1940’s, the government began helping families buy homes by backing the loans. In order to get a loan, the house had to be in a neighborhood that was in the top two of four categories. The assessors used a red pen to circle the neighborhoods that fell into the bottom two categories. This was called redlining, and the neighborhoods that fell into these bottom categories were primarily Black neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were ineligible for the loans which caused racial segregation throughout cities. Also, Blacks could not buy homes in the most affordable neighborhoods. Public housing projects were built in the redlined communities. The 1949 Housing Act was a renewal program that was aimed to get rid of the inner city ghettoes, and to remove many people from their homes by condemning them, forcing them into public housing. The majority affected by this were Blacks. The Whites then began to leave cities and move to the suburbs, bringing the middle-class jobs with them. Racially restrictive covenants were ruled illegal in 1948, yet they were not enforced by the FHA until 1950. (Fischer 141, 1998) This meant that communities were able to segregate based on color without issue. Once racial segregation was made illegal within neighborhoods, ‘White Flight’ became an issue. White flight was when White families would leave neighborhoods when a person of color would move in because they thought that they would lower the property value and the overall value of the neighborhood. Although this was legal, the morals behind it were cruel and unethical causing racism to spread more and causing the gap to widen.

The media and the overall sense of racism within communities played a large role in the gap of wealth and social standing between Whites and people of color. The media has often portrayed Blacks as lazy and not wanting work. Also, in many cases the media has portrayed Black women as welfare reliant, wanting to ‘have babies to receive welfare checks’. This was because of AFDC, a welfare program that seemed to give incentive to women to have children so that they could gain more welfare benefits. (Week 5 &6 PowerPoint, slide 54) AFDC also was only available to single parents which caused the split of many Black families because of their need for money. However, the fact that Black women were believed to take advantage of this was a racial stigma spread by the media. This has caused the people and viewers to grow to learn these racist and biased opinions. Although the act of being racist can be the belief that one race is superior to another, it can also be colorblind. This means that there is a direct avoidance and acknowledgement of race. If one is a ‘Colorblind Racist’, they neglect that there have been and still are inequalities that need attention. (Silva 132, 2001) Nowadays, people may believe that they are not being racist if they completely rule out the fact that there is race, which causes them to not pay attention to the fact that there are racial inequalities. Presently, there are still many racial inequalities contributing the gap in wealth between Whites (and in some occasions Asians) and people of color. These issues still need to be addressed in order to lessen the gap. Another type of racism that is contributing to the neglect is Laissez Faire racism where excuses are made to try to justify why the injustices are still present. The “structures of investment opportunity” the racialization of the state attribute to the tremendous inequality in wealth between Whites and people of color. Structural racism is embedded in social structures such as laws and policies. New Deal legislation such as Social Security systematically excluded Blacks in the earlier years. As welfare recipients became viewed as primarily Black and undeserving, welfare benefits became political targets and antipoverty programs were cut. TANF was a state-funded welfare program that gave the state control of who is eligible to receive welfare. This enabled the state to be racially selective and caused families to deplete all resources to gain aid.

The gap of wealth between Blacks and Whites has been prevalent for centuries. The past events and laws have contributed to the current racial inequalities. Slavery and segregation, housing sales and restrictions, and state-funded welfare all add to the current state of discriminations and imbalances of race in our communities. If these issues were assessed more accurately and unbiased, we could potentially close the gap between Blacks and Whites and finally have an equal society.