The next step would be figuring out what causes cultures to change their preferred level of hierarchy.
If you've seen a Strindberg play or the Ingmar Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" it seems clear that nineteenth-century Sweden was an extremely formal, class-bound society. Men used to be addressed by their titles ("Engineer Andersson"... although that's a bad example because Andersson is a "common" surname and successful men were sometimes pressured to change their names to something more aristocratic), which is something the rest of us only do for physicians and PhDs. And up until a government-led reform in the 1960s, spoken Swedish had a complex, Japanese-style menu of social registers:
This ties in with something I don't understand about Thomas Piketty's work. He's argued that the reason Western Europe is less unequal than the United States isn't because left-wing social movements fought more successfully for a redistributive welfare state. According to his reading it was the other way around: Europe was historically far more unequal but the destruction of elite wealth in the early twentieth century made the upper classes less politically powerful, which is why the welfare state made more progress after 1945.
But how does Sweden fit into this? They're on the left tail of the bell curve when it comes to European egalitarianism, but they stayed out of both world wars and avoided the wealth losses the rest of the continent experienced. You'd expect the postwar Swedish elite to have been more successful at defending its position than elites in Britain, France and Germany, but that seems not to have happened.
I don't know about this one. First of all I am always very very skeptical of claims in which good things go hand in hand together. But let me state my case.
I know this is a qualitative analysis but there is too much selective analysis and honestly wrong understanding of culture. Following are some of the problem I have:
1.) Jante Law is very much synonymous with a collectivist outlook which in your previous post you considered a detrimental to gender equality. Also Japanese work culture is very much consensus seeking where you can talk to your boss very much freely and has been for a long time. this is not true for how promotion works but there work culture is certainly more open.
2.)Why would Korean's personal consumption be geared towards achieving more status when generally in a collectivist and hierarchical you are not supposed to show off your status: a fact certainly true for Japan.
3.) Now I can argue against the claim that Confucius culture promote hierarchy but my objection here is if I accept the premise about Confucius values being more deferential to hierarchy than why does China(origin of Confucius values) have such a better female representation than SK and Japan in both senior management and in politics despite still having in some sense way worse sexist attitudes.
I have few other objections. But the last point I want to draw attention to isn't any disagreement i have but the simple widely agreed upon point that project of gender equality is a multi generation one and is not as rapid as economic progress in best of circumstances. Hence the secret of Scandinavian success is that due to geographical closeness to UK(birthplace of enlightenment) they just have a early start on countries like SK, Japan. Nigeria, etc.
I am really not trying to be mean or aggressive or dismissive here. Just not agreeing with the analysis.
Is it possible that the causality is the other way round? Rianne Eisler‘s work on partnership vs domination (eg The Chalice and the Blade) suggests it might be. And worth reading anyway in relation to gender and equality even if you reject the reverse causality.
Very interesting bunch of questions, but so complex and historically distinct that it is hard to make some needed qualifications. First, it would be helpful to clarify what sort of equality is being discussed. Equality before the law is one thing, but equality in terms of the desirability of various possible marital (or sexual) partners is quite another, as would be equality in terms of desirability of possible coalition partners. Second, much will depend on the nature of political or other coalitional subgroups, how they compete, and what they must do to obtain and hold onto political power and resources. Also, I suspect that one would find differing routes to one type of equality or another depending upon the developmental state of the society and how near to subsistence its way of living has been. So the route that has been taken in Scandinavia is probably not very like the route taken in cultures living at or near subsistence levels. There are other sources of inequality that are very important but too complex to wade into in a brief comment. Thank you for stimulating a worthwhile discussion.
one thing worth considering in this matrix is narcissism & psychopathy, Narcissists & pscyhopaths can be very focus on status in whatever milieu is current, and tend to prefer win/lose arenas to play-out their status preferences, and hierarchies, see Zitek, Emily, and Alex Jordan. “Narcissists Don’t Like Flat Organizations.” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/research-narcissists-dont-like-flat-organizations.
on the split, it's 50/50 for covert narcissism and 80% male for grandiose narcissists, 20% female. Such self-centredness is guessed to be about 10% of the population, but as is often stated psychopaths (who are all grandiose narcissists & preponderantly male perhaps 1% of population) are to be found in much higher proportions as you go up the hierarchies, I think these needs to be addressed in essays like this
Really interesting, Alice. Once you framed it (the greater the social hierarchy, the worse the sexual oppression) it seems self apparent. Thank you. You are so prolific and continually insightful.
Is the land abundance factor still true in modern day Africa? They had very high population growth in the last six decades, especially in a country like Nigeria which now has almost 25% of all Sub-Saharan African population. Would the land shortage lead to a more hierarchical society or would the adoption of modern agriculture prevent this dynamic (African cerial yields per hectare has seen little to no improvement in the past 60 years).
Hierarchy: my comment is tangential to your main theme ...... but I feel I must point out (as an important piece of context to your interesting post) that EVERYTHING in human affairs is hierarchical -in the broadest sense of the word - is now; always has been and always will be. To adapt Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism: "nothing in life is certain except death, taxes.... and hierarchies". To give just one illustration of this universal truth: Try suggesting to the leader of some egalitarian crusade "how's about you not be leader anymore... just an ordinary foot soldier?" and see what the reaction would be.
I am sure the cross-cultural association is roughly as you describe, both because of a) general modernization theories/processes such as those suggested by Inglehart, b) because after all the two things you link are conceptually quite similar (they are both about equality after all), and c) plausible also the ideas/mechanism you identify.
That however makes the exceptions even more intriguing. For example, what to make of highland Papua, that was (is) both egalitarian and gender unequal.
The next step would be figuring out what causes cultures to change their preferred level of hierarchy.
If you've seen a Strindberg play or the Ingmar Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" it seems clear that nineteenth-century Sweden was an extremely formal, class-bound society. Men used to be addressed by their titles ("Engineer Andersson"... although that's a bad example because Andersson is a "common" surname and successful men were sometimes pressured to change their names to something more aristocratic), which is something the rest of us only do for physicians and PhDs. And up until a government-led reform in the 1960s, spoken Swedish had a complex, Japanese-style menu of social registers:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen
All of this changed because Swedes consciously decided to become very egalitarian. But why did they do that?
This ties in with something I don't understand about Thomas Piketty's work. He's argued that the reason Western Europe is less unequal than the United States isn't because left-wing social movements fought more successfully for a redistributive welfare state. According to his reading it was the other way around: Europe was historically far more unequal but the destruction of elite wealth in the early twentieth century made the upper classes less politically powerful, which is why the welfare state made more progress after 1945.
But how does Sweden fit into this? They're on the left tail of the bell curve when it comes to European egalitarianism, but they stayed out of both world wars and avoided the wealth losses the rest of the continent experienced. You'd expect the postwar Swedish elite to have been more successful at defending its position than elites in Britain, France and Germany, but that seems not to have happened.
I don't know about this one. First of all I am always very very skeptical of claims in which good things go hand in hand together. But let me state my case.
I know this is a qualitative analysis but there is too much selective analysis and honestly wrong understanding of culture. Following are some of the problem I have:
1.) Jante Law is very much synonymous with a collectivist outlook which in your previous post you considered a detrimental to gender equality. Also Japanese work culture is very much consensus seeking where you can talk to your boss very much freely and has been for a long time. this is not true for how promotion works but there work culture is certainly more open.
2.)Why would Korean's personal consumption be geared towards achieving more status when generally in a collectivist and hierarchical you are not supposed to show off your status: a fact certainly true for Japan.
3.) Now I can argue against the claim that Confucius culture promote hierarchy but my objection here is if I accept the premise about Confucius values being more deferential to hierarchy than why does China(origin of Confucius values) have such a better female representation than SK and Japan in both senior management and in politics despite still having in some sense way worse sexist attitudes.
I have few other objections. But the last point I want to draw attention to isn't any disagreement i have but the simple widely agreed upon point that project of gender equality is a multi generation one and is not as rapid as economic progress in best of circumstances. Hence the secret of Scandinavian success is that due to geographical closeness to UK(birthplace of enlightenment) they just have a early start on countries like SK, Japan. Nigeria, etc.
I am really not trying to be mean or aggressive or dismissive here. Just not agreeing with the analysis.
1) Sweden is not collectivist like India or China, they do not have strong family ties. The state provides welfare.
2) Koreans do show off status. That’s just obvious from spending on luxury goods.
3) I have previously written on vertical firms in SK and J. China has no women in the top of the CCP. None none none.
Is it possible that the causality is the other way round? Rianne Eisler‘s work on partnership vs domination (eg The Chalice and the Blade) suggests it might be. And worth reading anyway in relation to gender and equality even if you reject the reverse causality.
Very interesting bunch of questions, but so complex and historically distinct that it is hard to make some needed qualifications. First, it would be helpful to clarify what sort of equality is being discussed. Equality before the law is one thing, but equality in terms of the desirability of various possible marital (or sexual) partners is quite another, as would be equality in terms of desirability of possible coalition partners. Second, much will depend on the nature of political or other coalitional subgroups, how they compete, and what they must do to obtain and hold onto political power and resources. Also, I suspect that one would find differing routes to one type of equality or another depending upon the developmental state of the society and how near to subsistence its way of living has been. So the route that has been taken in Scandinavia is probably not very like the route taken in cultures living at or near subsistence levels. There are other sources of inequality that are very important but too complex to wade into in a brief comment. Thank you for stimulating a worthwhile discussion.
one thing worth considering in this matrix is narcissism & psychopathy, Narcissists & pscyhopaths can be very focus on status in whatever milieu is current, and tend to prefer win/lose arenas to play-out their status preferences, and hierarchies, see Zitek, Emily, and Alex Jordan. “Narcissists Don’t Like Flat Organizations.” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/research-narcissists-dont-like-flat-organizations.
on the split, it's 50/50 for covert narcissism and 80% male for grandiose narcissists, 20% female. Such self-centredness is guessed to be about 10% of the population, but as is often stated psychopaths (who are all grandiose narcissists & preponderantly male perhaps 1% of population) are to be found in much higher proportions as you go up the hierarchies, I think these needs to be addressed in essays like this
Really interesting, Alice. Once you framed it (the greater the social hierarchy, the worse the sexual oppression) it seems self apparent. Thank you. You are so prolific and continually insightful.
Is the land abundance factor still true in modern day Africa? They had very high population growth in the last six decades, especially in a country like Nigeria which now has almost 25% of all Sub-Saharan African population. Would the land shortage lead to a more hierarchical society or would the adoption of modern agriculture prevent this dynamic (African cerial yields per hectare has seen little to no improvement in the past 60 years).
Hierarchy: my comment is tangential to your main theme ...... but I feel I must point out (as an important piece of context to your interesting post) that EVERYTHING in human affairs is hierarchical -in the broadest sense of the word - is now; always has been and always will be. To adapt Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism: "nothing in life is certain except death, taxes.... and hierarchies". To give just one illustration of this universal truth: Try suggesting to the leader of some egalitarian crusade "how's about you not be leader anymore... just an ordinary foot soldier?" and see what the reaction would be.
I am sure the cross-cultural association is roughly as you describe, both because of a) general modernization theories/processes such as those suggested by Inglehart, b) because after all the two things you link are conceptually quite similar (they are both about equality after all), and c) plausible also the ideas/mechanism you identify.
That however makes the exceptions even more intriguing. For example, what to make of highland Papua, that was (is) both egalitarian and gender unequal.