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- Title
Social Ranking in a Turkish Village.
- Authors
Stirling, Paul
- Abstract
This article describes the system of social ranking in a village of Central Anatolia. By far the most important factor in rank is wealth. One might express this by saying that the economic scale enters into more contexts than any other of the scales, and especially into contexts concerned with the ordering of activities. Wealth for the village means wealth in land and animals. The villagers have little respect for wages and salaries, regarding these as doubtful and only temporary sources. Money is quickly and easily spent and a salary may cease at any moment, but land and animals are permanent assets, permanent security against hunger and poverty. This discussion of the effect on the village ranking system of the formal political hierarchy is largely a digression, necessary in the context in order to establish a negative reading. Aside, therefore, from this political scale, three sets of scales of rank in the village have been distinguished or to put it in the other vocabulary, three groups of factors determining rank. These are age and position in one's own family and lineage, wealth and occupation and morality and religion. There is no single scale of rank but many scales which differ slightly from each other. Every man would rank the village differently. One might even say that each man has different scales for different contexts. The single composite scale of ranking does not exist at all. But the many separate scales are so near each other as to justify the fiction of an overall scale.
- Subjects
TURKEY; SOCIAL status; WEALTH; RANKING; VILLAGES
- Publication
British Journal of Sociology, 1953, Vol 4, Issue 1, p31
- ISSN
0007-1315
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/587165