Acerca del autor

Elvin Hatch is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books, including Culture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology (1983).

De la contraportada

De la solapa interior

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

Respectable Lives: Social Standing in Rural New Zealand

University of California Press

People everywhere conduct their lives in milieux that are saturated with ideas about prestige—or standing, status, social honor, distinction. Certain features of a prestige structure or status system are within conscious awareness, such as who stands higher than whom; but much of it is not, including most of the cultural framework by which relative standing is defined. Any system of social rank entails a complex and unrecognized body of ideas—a cultural theory of social hierarchy—which is the basis of the hierarchical order and defines achievement for those who are part of it. These same ideas also help to shape one's sense of self, for they identify what kind of person one should be and what kind of life is worth living.

This book is about a small, sheep-farming community on the South Island of New Zealand, and its central argument is that the local system of social standing and conceptions of self are grounded in historically variable, cultural systems of meaning; thus, the social hierarchy cannot be perceived directly by the senses, because it takes form only when viewed from the cultural perspective of the people. These are also contested systems of meaning, for various sectors of the community have an interest in defining personal worth and social standing differently. A crucial part of the hierarchical order, therefore, is the processes by which these differences are worked out over time.

This study grows out of work that I did previously in a California community, a locality that consisted chiefly of dryland grain farms, cattle ranches, and a very small town.1 A central problem of that research was the question of community. This locality was more than a “collocation of houses,”2 for most of the residents displayed the sense that they had something in common, and whatever that was, it gave the district its identity. Part of what made this a community is that the people knew about and interacted with one another, and, more important, they participated in a set of institutions in which they had a common interest. They cared about the schools, for example, and about facilities for holding local events. But an equally if not more fundamental (and less obvious) aspect emerged as I lived there: that is, the community was a significant reference group,3 and one of its fundamental features was a hierarchy of standing. Everyone in the district, whether they liked it or not, was placed by others within this hierarchy. People in the locality had their reputations at stake, or their local sense of personal worth and identity, and the dynamics of the community reflected this principle.

I later decided to pursue a similar study in another country, one similar enough to the United States both culturally and historically that I could undertake a close comparison. I also wanted to choose a community that would be very much like the one in California: it should be fully modern, and family farms should make up the economic base of the district. But above all I wanted a locality that exhibited the characteristics I described above: it should constitute an important reference group and a significant arena for social achievement, for I was interested in exploring the nature of the local status system.

I chose to do the work in New Zealand, and in 1978 I traveled from Auckland to Invercargill looking for a suitable place. The region of Canterbury, on South Island, seemed ideal, and, following the advice of people in the University of Canterbury and the Ministry of Agriculture,4 I chose a community that I refer to as South Downs, a pseudonym.*

*I also use pseudonyms for other nearby localities and for personal names. I appreciate that there are serious disadvantages in so doing, the most important being that it impedes others from checking my findings. However, my material comes almost entirely from tape-recorded interviews and other conversations that cannot be “checked” as archival sources can. In any event, my overriding concern in using pseudonyms is to protect the privacy of the people studied, many of whom spoke freely about matters very personal to them because they understood that I would try to protect their identity. While the material in this book may seem innocuous to an outsider, much of it is highly sensitive to people in the South Downs district.

South Downs was ideal in part because it is a distinctly bounded community, as we shall see, and also because it is far enough from larger towns and cities that it exhibits the characteristics of a vigorous reference group. In March 1981, my family and I moved into a house in the township, and we stayed until just after the new year, over nine months in all.**

South Downs is several hours' drive south of Christchurch, which in turn is one of the leading cities of New Zealand and the focal point of Canterbury.

Much of Canterbury consists of the fertile Canterbury Plains, a long shelf, bordering the ocean, that was formed by alluvium washing down from the Southern Alps. The plains are devoted mostly to

**The primary source of material for this research was informal, open-ended interviews. Typically I chose to interview people I had recently met (at a shop, at a meeting, through a friend), and in some cases I contacted that person again somewhat later to discuss a new set of topics. In a few instances I had three or more interviews with the same individual. I began each session having a general idea of what I wanted to cover, but I did not use a formal list of questions, and the discussions often took wholly unexpected turns. The conversations were tape-recorded, and I transcribed them verbatim soon afterward so that I could refer back to them in preparing for subsequent interviews. Typically the discussions lasted from half an hour to over two hours. While the interviews were the cornerstone of the research, my immersion in the community was equally significant, for this provided background and context that were indispensable for interpreting the interview material. Because my children attended the schools, my wife and I participated as parents in both formal and informal school activities. My wife became a member of a variety of local organizations, such as the golf club, and I was incorporated informally into the Jaycees. I attended county council meetings, Lions Club events, Agricultural and Pastoral Association work days, and the like. My family and I were also drawn into numerous informal social activities. My two children made several very good friends, and my wife and I soon got to know their friends' parents reasonably well. My wife and I acquired friends of our own, and we soon became part of an established social network in the district. The people of this network (and the people we knew best in the community) were primarily middle-aged landholders at the mature stage of the developmental cycle.

mixed farming, although even the most casual observer can see that sheep are especially important in the region. Serving the farms is a network of villages and towns, the most important of which are located on the main railway line.

The width of the Canterbury Plains varies, reaching a maximum slightly south of Christchurch, but at any spot the topography follows a common pattern. If we begin on the coast and proceed directly inland, traversing the plains at a right angle, we eventually come to the foothills or downlands. These are intersected by a series of rivers that run more or less parallel to one another and flow directly across the plains and into the sea. Moving into the downlands we continue to climb in elevation, until eventually we come to the base of the Southern Alps, which are steep, rugged, and high enough for glaciers to form. Passage over the mountains to the West Coast of South Island is possible only through a few difficult passes; consequently the Alps form a very effective divide between Canterbury and the West Coast.

The county of South Downs is located in the downlands and is divided into three main parts. First is the district of South Downs, or South Downs proper, which occupies the upper two-thirds of a narrow valley some thirty miles long; the valley floor is about 1,000 feet above sea level, and above it the hills rise another 2,500 to 6,000 feet. The township of South Downs, located in the valley bottom, has a population of about nine hundred, with another nine hundred individuals populating the surrounding farmland. The district is devoted almost entirely to sheep, although a few cattle are raised and some wheat and other crops are grown. These are predominantly farms, not runs,*** although a few runs occupy the higher and rougher portions of the district.

The second section is Midhurst, which occupies the lower end of the same valley. Midhurst has a township even smaller than that of South Downs, consisting of slightly over one hundred people; the Midhurst district as a whole also has fewer residents—less than five hundred all together. Like South Downs, most of the landholders in Midhurst are sheep farmers, although again, some sheep runs are located in the higher and rougher regions.

The third section completes the county. This is the Glassford dis-

***This distinction is based on differences in property use. A farm is characterized by intensive agriculture, including cultivation of the soil, whereas a run is extensively farmed with little if any cultivation.

trict, with a population of nearly fifteen hundred and including a township of slightly more than three hundred people. Taking in the comparatively high country situated between South Downs and Midhurst, on the one hand, and the Southern Alps, on the other, Glassford is topographically diverse, a combination of relatively flat land, steep hills, and the slopes of the Southern Alps. The area is considered very cold, difficult country, and the properties there are quite large, since several acres are needed to feed a single animal. These are runs, not farms; here, sheep are grazed to as high as the animals can forage during summer, and whereas the properties in the South Downs and Midhurst districts generally are between 350 and 500 acres, in Glassford they are several thousand at least. Many of these runs are very isolated, a fact that has helped to stimulate a strong sense of community among the run-holding families there.

These three districts are thought of as separate but closely related communities, and what underlies their common identity is that they form a single county. Each district elects its own representatives to the county council, which among other things oversees the roads and bridges of the region, a matter of considerable interest to land-holders.5 The three districts also share the same high school and are part of a single telephone system. In a sense the South Downs district is the most notable of the three, in that it has the largest population and its township contains the greatest number of businesses; the county offices, high school, and telephone exchange are also in the South Downs township. Nevertheless, the Midhurst and Glassford districts do not see themselves as subordinate to South Downs, but rather as equal (though grudging) partners. Indeed, Midhurst tends to see itself as slightly superior to South Downs: it thinks of itself as a more cohesive community and of its farmers as more progressive. And the Glassford district sees itself as superior to both, since run-holding confers greater distinction than farming.

The most important basis for the distictiveness of each of these districts is that they have separate social hierarchies. Landholders know all the other farmers and run-holders in their own district and can place them at least roughly in a single hierarchy of standing, but that hierarchy stops at the borders of the district. For example, virtually every farmer in the South Downs district can discuss the quality of the sheep and paddocks of any other South Downs landholder, and he can comment on his credit worthiness, business acumen, financial well-being, and so on—all of which (among other things)

are important for placing that person within the local social order. The same farmer may know most of the Midhurst landholders by name, and some by reputation; but he would have trouble placing them in a hierarchical order, and in any event he would resist trying to place them within the hierarchy of his own district.

The boundedness of these communities reflects the topographic characteristics of the region. The three districts are divided not only from one another but from still other communities by natural boundaries: mountain ranges, escarpments, and rivers. In this respect these communities are unlike other Canterbury farm districts located on the plains, where natural boundaries are fewer and communities tend to overlap or merge a good deal more.

The three districts are not isolated, however. They are geographically part of, and they identify with, a larger subprovincial section of Canterbury. The east-west borders of this subprovincial section are defined by the ocean and the Southern Alps, respectively, and the south-north borders by major rivers. The people living in South Downs county know the names of at least a few of the leading people in each of the communities making up this larger region, and many have friends and relatives in nearby communities as well. At the economic and symbolic (but not the geographic) center of the subprovincial region is Jackson, its largest town, situated on the main railway line. Most people living in the county of South Downs travel to Jackson several times a year at least. Teenagers sometimes drive there for the evening to see a movie, and many families shop there once a month or so; most landholders visit their accountant there a few times a year, and possibly their banker as well. People also travel occasionally to Christchurch either for business or pleasure, though the drive is long enough that very few do so regularly.

In this study I focus chiefly on the hierarchy of the district of South Downs, and only secondarily on Glassford and Midhurst.

Two main theoretical principles underlie this book. The first is that social standing, achievement, and personal worth or identity are central to most social systems. Consider the Trobriand Islanders.6 Trobriand yam gardeners were oriented not so much to-

ward the problem of subsistence—or toward sheer material survival—as toward the goal of maintaining or achieving a good name for themselves, their families, hamlets, and villages; this they did largely by growing very large quantities of healthy, robust yams. The relations among groups were essentially competitive ones, whereby the members sought to establish their standing and respectability through yam gardening.7

Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu argues that the issue of standing or achievement is central to the dynamics of modern French society.8 According to Bourdieu, the dominant class in France is made up of two parts: one, chiefly the major industrial and commercial employers, enjoys a large volume of economic capital, while the other, including artists and professors, enjoys a large volume of cultural capital. The two segments are engaged in what Bourdieu calls a classification struggle, in which each seeks to advance its own criteria both for measuring standing and for defining the meaningful and worthy life.9

The second principle underlying this book is that status systems are grounded on systems of meaning. Thus, a main task of the analysis will be to render those meanings. This is not all that the research should do; it should also attempt to understand the actions of individuals—to analyze the avenues of achievement that are available to them, as well as their attempts to alter the system to their own advantage by changing the cultural definitions of social standing and personal worth. Yet because the actions of individuals are unintelligible outside the context of their cultural ideas, understanding the cultural framework is an essential step in this study.

To appreciate the force of this point, consider the social structural theories that have sought to explain differences in the prestige of occupations in Western societies.10 These theories tend to naturalize the processes that underlie prestige, or to assume that certain qualities “naturally” stimulate respect or admiration in the individual's mind. For example, Donald Treiman asks rhetorically why positions that enjoy power and privilege everywhere are accorded high standing (a generalization, incidentally, that needs to be seriously qualified if it is to be accepted),11 to which he replies: “The answer is simple—power and privilege are universally valued in all societies.”12 For Treiman, then, it is a natural process of human thought to look up to, admire, or envy persons or positions that exhibit these features.

Treiman states explicitly that his theory applies only to occupa-

tions and not to the differences in prestige among, say, ethnic groups or family names, but this caveat seems disingenuous.13 He holds that his theory explains why the same occupations tend to rank at about the same level in all societies; clearly, in his view, a powerful force is at work, which is the desirability of power and privilege. To be consistent, he must extend the same explanation to other parts of the status hierarchy: for example, to state that if one ethnic group enjoys greater power and privilege than another, it must also enjoy greater prestige.

Jonathan Turner expresses a view similar to Treiman's. Turner argues that, in general, the prestige of a social position reflects the degree to which it exhibits the qualities of power, skill, functional importance, and material wealth. These four attributes, he further suggests, attract prestige because of “a social psychological process”—by which he seems to mean that people “naturally” look up to social positions and individuals that manifest these qualities.14 Parallel assumptions are widespread in the social sciences; for example, Robert Murphy remarks that “in hunting societies, a successful hunter will generally be accorded considerable esteem, for he shows excellence in a pursuit basic to the group's survival.”15 Hunting peoples, like everyone else, “naturally” admire the individual who contributes significantly to the group's material well-being.

My argument in this book is that people are not naturally attracted to certain attributes, for what is desirable, prestigious, and fulfilling is defined by culturally variable systems of meaning. Hence the critical starting point for the analysis of a prestige or status system is to render the meanings that underlie it.

Not only are the values that define what people look up to cultural and not natural, but so are the signs by which the individual judges the relative standing of a social position. Consider Treiman's theory once more. In his analysis the attributes that signify social standing are “natural” signs, the meanings of which are self-evident or transparent. On the one hand they are brute facts, directly observable by the senses; a person can literally see both the exercise of power and differences in material well-being. Thus, in principle, disagreements between two people over the relative prestige of an occupation can be resolved by appealing to objective facts: how much power does the holder of the occupation actually wield, and what is the level of his or her material compensation?

On the other hand, in Treiman's analysis universal standards are used to interpret the objective signs of social position, with the implication that the signs making up the status system of any one society are directly intelligible to the members of any other society. For example, the power and material advantages that distinguish the high-prestige occupations in our society should be as clear to another people as they are to us—one only has to look to see that the well-to-do drive better cars, have physically easier or more interesting work, own more labor-saving devices, eat better food, and live in larger and more comfortable homes. Similarly, we need only look to appreciate that the headman in a chiefdom is better off and enjoys greater power than his subordinates.

Bernard Barber has also studied occupational prestige. According to Barber, an occupation's standing is determined by its importance for the continuance of the larger society: the greater the functional significance of a role, the greater its prestige. What is more, he suggests, “most people can make pretty good estimates of what the functional significance of the various occupational roles actually is.”16 Thus, the quality or attribute of functional significance constitutes a set of signs for judging social standing, and the sociologist who analyzes occupations in terms of their functional significance “sees” approximately the same hierarchy as the people who view the system from their own perspective. All parties see the same brute facts that are directly observable by the senses, and they apply universal standards in interpreting them.

In this book I argue that the signs that people read when they view the social hierarchy not only are defined by cultural meanings, but they cannot be perceived apart from those meanings. For example, the economic order is an important arena of achievement in both New Zealand and California, with wealth an important factor (or set of signs) for assessing social position in both places. Yet wealth is defined differently in the two locales, with the result that the signs of wealth are different. A California farmer, stepping into a New Zealand farming community for the first time, would “see” a different hierarchy of wealth from what the New Zealanders do.17 Similarly, if a European man were to step into a Kachin gumsa community in Burma for the first time, he would be unable to “read” the rank of the lineages residing there because he lacks the cultural framework for doing so. By contrast, if a Kachin man from another

community were to enter that same village, he would be able to order the local lineages relatively easily, since he understands the symbols that express rank.18

I have mentioned that the systems of meaning need not be fully agreed upon, because segments of society have an interest in altering the definitions of social honor and personal worth. Even in the absence of overt competition, it may be common for individuals to employ somewhat different cultural meanings in regard to the status system; consequently, they may render somewhat different interpretations of the same signs. For example, a handful of families in South Downs possess religious convictions that lead them to define moral worth by principles different from the ones I analyze. Yet the investigator has no choice but to try to enter into the cultural world of the people, however fluid and diversified it may be, if he or she is to render the status system intelligible.

It is important to be clear that South Downs is not a homogeneous community and that the patterns I describe in this book are not fully consensual. What I have set out to do here is explore the internal principles or patterns of a particular cultural system to which people adhere at various times and to varying degrees. While this is not the only cultural system for defining social hierarchy and moral worth within the community, I suggest that it enjoys a unique status among its rivals, for it is the dominant system in the district. A lack of consensus need not imply anarchy.

The issues of heterogeneity and dissent lead directly to that of gender, for concepts of moral worth and personhood in South Downs are different for men and women. Although gender receives little explicit treatment in this book, its significance is pervasive.

The place to begin is with a cultural ideal in South Downs concerning the differences in men's and women's relationship to the economic order. According to this ideal, men are active agents in the economic sphere—in principle, they are the ones who engage in business affairs—whereas women are dependent on the men's roles in the workplace. The strength of this model became apparent when

one of the firms in the South Downs township was forced to lay off some employees. The policy they adopted was to dismiss married women first, before any of the men, regardless of seniority; the grounds for doing so were that men are the primary breadwinners in the household, whereas the married women had men to support them. Virtually everyone I spoke to, men and women alike, regarded the policy as fitting.

The strength of the model is also manifest in the concept of the farmer. A woman may own a farm by herself, and conceivably she could do all the work on it that a male owner would do (though I know of no case in South Downs where this was true); but even so, to refer to her as a farmer would strain normal usage to the limit.19 The business of farming is conceived as inherently masculine, and this is so even though women's labor is extremely important on many properties, especially during the early years of ownership when there is insufficient income to hire other help. A woman may be highly regarded for her contribution to the farm operation, yet the labor she provides is considered supportive, not primary, and in an important sense she is viewed as subordinate to her husband in the operation of the business.

This conception of the relationship of men and women to the economic system corresponds to local ideals concerning the social hierarchy. Here, the status system is regarded as a hierarchy of households that draw their standing from the male household heads, and the position of women derives largely from the standing of the households to which they belong.20 Thus a study of the social hierarchy is essentially a study of the occupations and activities of men.

Reality presents complications that confuse the ideal models I have described. An example is a schoolteacher—a woman—whose occupation ranks substantially higher than that of her husband, a truck driver; another is the handful of adult women in the community who support themselves and their children on their own. Nonetheless, the ideal provides a dominant framework that community members use in representing the local social order.

The implications of this folk model for the present study are considerable. On the one hand, the focus of the research is decidedly on the affairs of men, not women, simply because the local social hierarchy is defined primarily in relation to males. On the other hand, this folk model implies that a man's sense of self-worth and achievement is developed largely in the context of a masculine-oriented

social hierarchy. A man measures his achievements primarily in relation to men and by reference to masculine affairs.

It has been suggested that hierarchy means different things to men and women and that ideals like those described here are not gender-neutral at all; in other words, they do not represent a middle standpoint shared by males and females equally, but reflect the perspective of men specifically.21 According to this argument, women's voices and perspectives tend to be suppressed by male-gendered ideals like the above. In the research for this study, I was careful to include a wide range of women. Because these women seemed to express the ideals I have described as adeptly and as readily as the men, I have no reason to think that gender differences do exist in regard to conceptions of the social hierarchy. Yet I was not particularly sensitive to the question of male/female perspectives when I was engaged in the field research, and I did not inquire specifically into the question. Consequently, I do not claim that the analysis presented here is gender-neutral, or that everyone shares the perspective that prevails in this work, that is, that women's standing in both the economic order and the social hierarchy is different from that of men. Rather, I attempt to explain how the social order looks and works when it is seen from the viewpoint of—or from within—the perspective I describe here.

The issue of gender enters into this study in another crucial sense as well. Because occupation is so central to conceptions of personal worth and social standing in the district, I devote a good deal of attention to the cultural ideas underlying the local occupational system. Yet the work that people do in the economic sphere defines personal identity very differently for men than for women. Although occupation may be extremely important for a woman's sense of selfworth, it is not central to her gender identity, whereas it is for a man's.

Consider the case mentioned above, in which a local firm, forced to retrench, laid off some of its women employees. One of these women, who had worked for the firm for many years, was severely affected personally by the loss of her job. I suggest that an important reason for her upset was that her personal identity had come to be defined largely by her employment. Her identity as a woman, however—her gender identity—was unaffected by her joblessness.

By contrast, a man's identity as a man is importantly (though not completely) defined by his work.22 Unemployment may thus be a

feminizing experience for the male, and the same may be true when a wife is significantly more successful in the economic order than the husband. For a man, achievement in the occupational sphere means not only the improvement of his social position, but also the affirmation of his gender identity.

The idea that occupation means something different for men and women is suggested implicitly by Michèle Dominy, who argues in a recent study that the gender identity of “traditional” New Zealand women is defined chiefly in terms of an ideology of motherhood.23 The cultural ideal identifies the role of homemaker or the woman's activities in the domestic sphere as definitive for her sense of feminine self-worth. Yet this ideal also allows for the inclusion of certain nonhousehold activities—including public service or voluntary activities that are conceived in terms of the domestic or nurturant model—which may contribute significantly to a woman's sense of feminine self-worth as well. Dominy suggests, moreover, that through such participation women may achieve considerable influence in the public sphere. The woman's achievement of gender identity through her activities both in the home and in voluntary public service may, I believe, be further regarded as an analogue to the man's achievement of gender identity through work.

Rather than being irrelevant to this study, then, gender occupies a central place in it. This is true in two senses. First, the book is written in the masculine voice. It assumes what may be a male-gendered perspective, by which men and women are conceived as standing in a different relationship to the economic order and social hierarchy, with women under the mantle of their male household heads. Second, it focuses largely on occupation, which is central to the gender identity of men, not women. This book may thus be regarded not as a study of personhood in general within the district, but of male personhood specifically.

My analysis of South Downs begins with an account of the occupational system, a comprehensive framework for ordering all the households in the district. First I present the “shape” of this system, or the hierarchical pattern that emerges when the local occupations are viewed as an inclusive set; I then analyze the grounds that people use in assessing the relative standing of the positions that make up this set. My purpose is to suggest the more or less implicit principles that are constitutive of the hierarchical order, principles, I argue,

that are cultural, not natural, for they are historically contingent. Next I focus on the most important occupational category in the district, landholding, the goal again being to understand the system at a level that is largely beyond the conscious grasp of the people themselves. The landholding families are ordered on the basis of three primary—and also culturally variable—sets of criteria: wealth, farming ability, and refinement. The definition of wealth among landholders in South Downs is different from that of the California farmers I studied earlier, as noted; similarly, the criteria of ability and refinement rest on cultural theories of social hierarchy that have undergone significant modifications since the 1920s as a result of the vicissitudes of history. What is more, these last criteria—ability and refinement—lead directly to the concept of person, for each implies fundamentally different ideals on which the individual models him- or herself.

Before starting with the analysis of South Downs, however, I need to sketch the history of stratification in rural New Zealand. This will provide context that is essential for what follows.

Excerpted from Respectable Lives: Social Standing in Rural New Zealandby Elvin Hatch Copyright © 1991 by Elvin Hatch. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.