posted
I need a word to describe a clannish system where the people are grouped according to kinship ties and occupations. I thought of "caste", but I wonder whether that does not have too many bad connotations. What do you think?
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
How about tribe? It was used in some parts of the ancient world to describe people bound by certain ties of kinship and to a certain extent occupation. I wouldn't have any problems with caste though myself.
Posts: 156 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
Some terms I've heard before are moiety and gens. A quick google search also turns up phratry. If you put all of those into a single google search (clan moiety gens phratry) you turn up a lot of links that explain different types of clan system -- a lot of them seem to be interwoven with occupation and social responsibilities. Maybe one of those pages can spark some ideas for you. Or maybe you could make up your own term -- "the society consisted of seven technolineages..."
Posts: 92 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Future, or past (in its feel)? Future: polycorp, cooperative, zaibatsu (or some other foreign term). Past is tougher; I'd probably just do clan.
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
"Caste" has the associations it has for us because of the concept it describes. There is no point is using a different word.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Survivor -- I think I disagree with you. At least to my mind, "caste" implies a statified partitioning of a society. The other terms suggested don't carry that connotation -- membership in a given clan/gens/moiety/phratry/etc. does not, at least as far as I understand, confer upon a person either higher or lower social standing. If Silver3 wants to partition his society without implying some groups are socially superior to others, "caste" would seem to me to be inappropriate.
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but those are my thoughts.
posted
Ah, I forgot about phratry. If what you have is basically a caste system and you are looking to portray that with a name that implies the same thing but without the connotations that might be your best shot. As far as I remember phratry were very much based on class, although that is Greek history and I'm more Roman based myself. Since it is an old term it doesn't quite carry the same weight as caste. The Athenians were particularly famous for it so research on the Athenian phratry might be a place to start.
Posts: 156 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
There is no such thing as a society where membership in different social groups doesn't have a significant impact on how the society "at large" views an individual's worth. This is particularly the case when your social group is defined by the type of work you do, and even more so when lineage/parentage is a critical element of membership. And I don't restrict that to human societies either.
That's just the way things are. People find the term "caste" repugnant because they know what it means. That "clan" doesn't imply a division of labor and the other terms are not well known are the fundamental reasons these terms wouldn't have the same negative "connotations".
It isn't the connotation that is a problem, it's the denotative meaning of the word that people dislike.
I'm doing a caste system in a current WIP. I call it a caste system, and I don't pretend that this isn't basically abhorrent to a modern sensibility (naturally, part of the story hinges on the fact that certain people find it offensive). If your describing a social system and you realize that readers will go "hey, isn't that [social system now regarded as immoral]?" then you should just call it that yourself and get it out of the way.
posted
Gwalchmai -- thanks for the information -- I didn't know that was from Greek. A colleague of mine does research on Australian languages, and those cultures often have quite complex social structures, which is where I got the idea to look at anthropology websites.
quote:Some societies group their clans into even larger-scale unilineal descent groups called phratries. As with clans, the actual genealogical links are not clear and the phratry ancestors are usually mythical.
Entire societies may be divided into two large unilineal descent groups that have reciprocal responsibilities and privileges. These groups are known as moieties (from the French word for half). The distinction between phratries and moieties is not simply a matter of the number of groupings. Moieties are intended to produce a balanced opposition within a society. The constantly reinforced social and economic exchanges between them results in economic equality and political stability.
[...some stuff snipped out here...]
Membership in unilineages, clans, moieties, and phratries is inherited and usually continues throughout life. As a result, these unilineal descent groups often function successfully as long-term joint property owners and economic production teams.
posted
That's interesting, but...is it really what's being described here?
I still vote for using the term "caste". It's not like you can describe a caste system and not have people recognize that you're describing a caste system. Whether or not they have a negative reaction to the word depends on how they feel about what your describing, not any bad connotations of the word itself.
posted
But surely it depends on whether you want those reactions to come immediately or later on as your readers discover more about your world? Describing something as a caste based system will immediately cause your reader to make certain assumptions, but by giving it a different name, one they might not have heard of, they can gradually come to any conclusions themselves as you expand on your character and his world, thus slowly building up an indignation for his situation. Or, if it isn't a big part of the story, it is also then possible to name the character's caste as a phratry or something else and your readers need only know the basics and not become embroiled in the politics of everything.
Posts: 156 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
I'm not looking for a replacement for a caste system. If it was strictly a caste system I would call it that name and not run rings around it. Although Gwalchmai has a point about the reactions. I'm looking for something closer to clans, I think. Kinship ties would be more important than occupation, and it would not be heavily based on religion (or heavily justified by religion, depends which way you look at it...) as the caste system was. Also, the ritual obligations would not be as strong. My point being: it's not exactly a caste system, it has a reason for the ties to be maintained that way that has to do with the system of magic, and I don't think it is an unfair system considering the way the magic works. That's why I don't want the connotations of "caste", which I think most people see as an injust system, especially since it only has a couple of common points with it. I have no wish to alienate my society up front. And, Survivor, I (very much politely) disagree: the way most societies work is through a double system of kinship ties and occupations (guilds, phratries, Athenian demes, etc). The kinship system is almost always assimilated with the occupation of people, since in most ancient societies women do not work and are in the phratry of their husbands. And jobs tend to be hereditary as well. In such systems, there is also always groups of people considered as inferior and superior. Yet we only name a couple of them "caste system". To me a caste system implies extreme separations (a brahman cannot let his shadow touch an intouchable or he has to purify himself, for instance) enforced by religious reasons. That's why I didn't want to use the word.
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Maybe you can incorporate intermarriage requirements. A number of Australian moiety/phratry systems use that, and they can be quite complex -- group A marries group B but group B marries group C, etc. If you have to marry into a given group, it can't be seen as that far removed on the social ladder.
Just a thought.
It sounds like an interesting world from what you've said so far!
posted
Hmmm...I think that you're best just going with a term of your own coinage, then.
It's true that most primitive societies work by just letting the father's job devolve on the sons (along with his property), while daughters-in-law marry into the family. That isn't really a system, though, and it never needs to be called anything at all.
But when the society at large systematically groups persons with a certain parentage into a certain class of occupation, that's a caste system. If it isn't a systematic grouping, just the natural tendency for children to follow the same type of work as their parents, then it doesn't need to be called anything. Our own culture rebels against the idea that children should even follow in their parent's footsteps, so we have a very negative idea of the opposite view. Calling it "unjust" is both true and meaningless. All social systems are unjust. The entire essence of a "social system" is that it regards people as items in groups rather than as individuals.
You need to decide whether this "system" is merely based on the native talents of different families and the natural tendency of children to learn from their parents, or whether it goes beyond that. Because if it goes beyond that, then it's basically a caste system. If it doesn't, then you don't need to name it anything at all, unless you really want to make up a name.
If you want to reveal that it's a caste system gradually rather than simply calling it that outright, then just make up a word. After all, caste systems weren't the ones that made up the term, "caste". It is a term applied from the outside, originally. For your society to use it would imply that they were aware that there is an alternative to the caste system.
posted
Hmm; not necessarily. I see your point, but...
If we have to take into account the origin of each word before using it, then we'll never dare use anything. I mean, by that kind of logic, I can't use the word "assassin" without meaning some kind of "hashish drugged crazed warrior", or "ostracize" without meaning "banish someone for ten years as the result of a vote written on shards of pottery".
In the real world, the Portuguese named the system they saw, and we kept the name. You imply that for Indians to use the word "caste" is to acknowledge the (negative) Portuguese way of seeing things. But in India they had a word for their own system (there were two actually, one for "great caste" and one for "clan, community"). It doesn't have all the negative connotations the word "caste" has taken, but it is a translation of the Portuguese. If you translate Sanskrit into English, you use the word "caste", and in a way I would be translating concepts of my world into English for an English reader.
Besides, of course they are aware there are other systems: they are not the only country in the world. They just don't think the others are right.
posted
I'm just saying, if you don't want to use the word "caste", then make something up. The same would apply if you wanted to avoid calling a certain job "assassin" or if you wanted to describe a social sanction like shunning or ostracization without using either of those words.
If you don't have a problem with using "caste", then use it. If you want to reveal your system gradually without letting the reader's preconceptions get in the way, then don't use it. But don't use any other word that a reader could look up and find out what you were describing. Use a made up word.
posted
Don't rely only on western civilization for this concept. Folks from India use the word "varna" for caste, and "jati" as a community within a caste. They even have jatis within jatis, which are known as a "jat". I've integrated the word "jati" into one of my stories, although it seems to be confusing my readers which means I need to be a little more clear up front as to what a jati is. You can always do a little GOOGLING on social structures in other societies and you will probably come up with a good substitute word.
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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They just don't think the others are right.
