The Manufacture of Inequality

Week 4 – Discussion 1

Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses.
 

The   Manufacture of Inequality

Chapter 7 of your textbook discusses how societies rank people based on distinctions such as race, gender, economic status, and other factors, sometimes based upon a misuse of biased science. These themes tie back to previously discussed topics of the construction of identity and economic structure. On page 304, Exercise 7.5, the textbook proposes to imagine how to construct a society with the knowledge we have regarding inequality. For this discussion, answer that prompt. Provide evidence from the textbook and/or other credible sources to support your answer. Make sure that you use cross-cultural evidence from the assigned material and/or other reliable material as an anthropologist would do; this is to say, you need evidence from more than one culture.

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your peers. In your responses, provide additional evidence that either support or question their approach to addressing inequality. If there are additional factors in inequality that should be taken into account, propose so politely and constructively.