Hierarchies rule us

Hierarchies like social phenomena can be attacked culturally, for instance, through laws and democratic reforms; however, attitudes that create hierarchies cannot. These seem to be ineradicable. Even though the fear of strangers is often basically unmotivated – more people are nicer than you think – xenophobia lives on.

The same inevitable basic pattern follows from the urge to divide people into social classes. Is there really a working class? Isn’t it simply a figment of the imagination? Obviously, I don’t mean the actual existence of this category in working life, but rather intellectually placing it in a hierarchy.

Hierarchisation seems to be a genuinely natural phenomenon. Consider the (impossible) idea of putting an end to the awarding of prizes in competitions. Try taking away first prize, second prize, third prize! The whole point is to have a hierarchy. In Swedish, tävling, the word for competition, comes from the Latin tabula, meaning ‘board,’ ‘gameboard.’ How could a person play chess without a winner? How much fun would it be to watch long jumpers when it’s not considered interesting to know who jumped the farthest?

In evolutionary psychology, this interest reaches far back in history, at least more than five million years ago, when our forebears diverged from the once common ancestral line of apes. In recent years, scientific findings based on our close relationship to chimpanzees have led to new conclusions about our own history. The ultimate goal which we share with all other mammals is to survive and reproduce. The biological purpose of copulation is for both males and females to pass on their genes – for the man, as many as possible. This task is built into the organism itself so it does not have to be “wanted.”

This works mainly as a result of the strong sex drive of males, writes the evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell at Durham University in her book A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women (2002). (That is why women should take responsibility for birth control, she takes the opportunity to note acerbically.) This may well be the very origin of the competitive nature of men, which is so sharply pronounced. For men, it was a matter of crushing or driving off aspirants from the most fertile females. This fertility was (and still is) instinctively easy to read, like healthy skin, symmetrical features, a hip/waist ratio of 0.7 to 1.0 and so forth, that is, the collective attributes that we talk about culturally as “female beauty,” but without always knowing precisely why. As a result, even here, we are dealing with a hierarchical system of values.

For male mammals, the varying rates of success in copulating were critical to their position in the reproductive hierarchy. “Alphas” occupied the top position. Today, as is well known, there are also other aspects involved, but even these were trounced in the competition. In the contest for reproduction, most males belong to an intermediate group; they do well but not best. Like today, there is also a group at the bottom, the males who didn’t get any female and thus no offspring either.

All notions of class, then and now, can be considered with good reason to be founded on the oldest principle of this ranking. Perhaps it doesn’t bear repeating that power and status in society today are based on more aspects than those just identified, but men’s sexual “conquests” are still based on status, including the beauty of their female partner.

In the history of evolution, the descendants of these alpha males have based their elevation in the hierarchy over the last few thousand years mainly on other merits: social power, reputation and money. Interestingly enough, without any real objection, we accept the notion of “upper class.” We defer to the language and talk about “the people up there.”

The upper class usually doesn’t need to be specified any further; it can be as high up as can be. Lineage, wealth and influence all qualify as criteria on their own, but it is clear they often coincide. Those who rank just below them have little more to brag about other than that they are not at the very bottom; some would say they represent a normal state: the middle class (compare with intermediate group, middle-income earner, average grades, indeed middle of the road). Throughout the history of our species, the majority have had to accept the superior position of “alpha males,” even linguistically, with different terms in different cultures. (Alpha is the brightest star in our constellation.)

With the great question being considered here, that is, the human mindset, some may find it a bit far-fetched to compare humans from this era with the naked creatures that lived in bands in Africa so many aeons ago. But that is thinking wrong. Biologically, we are all heirs. Evolution has equipped us with faculties that by chance have allowed us to survive and reproduce, notwithstanding the competition for territory and despite constant attacks by blood-thirsty animals. Our greatest defence has been the ever-improving organised cooperation of group members.

When I talk about evolution, it is imperative to note that the so-called “natural order” should not always be viewed as the best. It has only evolved (been created through evolution) based on prevailing conditions at any moment. It is the “best adapted” that wins, not the best in any other aspect. Adaptation need not even favour survival of one’s own species.

Consequently, nor should nature be seen as a cultural role model in our society. For instance, it is not tenable to refer to “the natural order” as an argument for keeping women at home with the children. An argument like that is usually considered the naturalistic fallacy. Human behaviour can very often be modified culturally so that it fits in with the values of our era. When fathers take care of infants, that is a cultural modification. In many ways, the cultural changes in family life violate what is natural in evolutionary terms. The influence of culture has become increasingly stronger.

No adult human nowadays is unaware that the term social class is related to concepts like power and status. When we say social class, we mean a relative position, high or low or somewhere in between. In Swedish, the sociologist Edmund Dahlström first used the expression socialklass in his dissertation Trivsel i Söderort [‘Well-being in the Southern Districts’] (1951). We know Marx’s expression Klasskampf or “class struggle” from 1846.

The later established synonym “social group,” which obscures this hierarchy, may perhaps be explained as a change in nuance that is so typical of our time. Another step away from the implicit hierarchy in the concept of class was taken with the expression “socio-economic group.” It also reflects a need to include additional variables in keeping with the growing complexity of society.

Yet… because people seldom allow their perception of reality to be changed through the use of new terminology (compare the switch from ‘foreigner’ to ‘immigrant’), it fails to produce the desired effect. The hierarchisations and gradations persist, and the middle class has no doubt been declared the winner in the second half of the 20th century. When more families consider themselves middle class, the concept of working class becomes problematic; what should characterise a worker? Then give a thought at the same time to the (tacitly provocative) term cultural worker! The upper class, quantitatively insignificant, for their part have lived on as the upper class in splendid isolation and have continued to feel content with their undisputed top ranking.

In the 1950s, the Swedish working class was still a category in sociological tables that was easy to define, likewise as a personal identity for the individual concerned. Naturally, individuals behind the statistics could be more or less proud of their Social Group 3 affiliation. But at the ballot box, there was obviously one of two workers’ parties to support. Today, large parts of the “working class” are in the middle class, which continues to expand socio-economically, especially with the broad meaning it has been given nowadays.

Who today belongs to the “objective” working class? Perhaps classes are best constituted by employment relations, as Stefan Svallfors suggests. Its perceived identity, however, is unclear. Nonetheless, today’s “objective” middle class stands unsteadily on the stilts of mass education. Words like “post” and “salary” (in contrast to “job” and “wages”) have lost their lustre, and adding the title “office clerk” to a person’s entry in the telephone directory, as was once the tradition, would make people laugh out loud.

Many who climbed the ladder up from the working class are now in the middle class; for some it is not clear that they belong. On top of that, voting behaviour has come to depend on the special offers being promoted by the parties. People who alternate between the right and the left can be expected to have a precarious perception of class belonging. In the days when there was a large working class, their quantitative weight served as a buttress. A closely related idea was “the majority is always right.”

The upper class is still there on top of the winner’s stand, whether they qualify by lineage, education or money. There is, however, a slight complication. Being ascribed to the upper class can nowadays seem unnatural for both senior physicians and highly-paid managing directors, while at the same time middle class doesn’t fit at all. Salvation has come in the form of a term exported from the US, upper middle class. Even poorly paid university professors can be included, if they want.

Despite the success story of leftist politics in the 20th century, the value orientation of people has not continued in that direction. The spirit of the times has abandoned “the collective.” On the whole, it seems that the social status of the individual has lost weight as a concept, that is, the very idea of being “placed” in a category. Of course, there still remains the biologically determined inheritance of hierarchy, but this is being marginalised by the new life orientation, the changed way of seeing one’s own life, with self-actualisation being the goal and the basis of people’s values.

With this gospel of freedom has followed a decline in respect for all kinds of authority: employers, bureaucrats, politicians, teachers, journalists, clergy, police officers, parents and so forth – a cultural transformation that has escaped no one’s attention. According to the World Values Survey, Sweden has positioned itself as one of the world’s most individualistic countries by far. Half of all pairings – or whatever they might be called – do not last.

In Swedish, the English loan word “single” has taken on a positive meaning, the bond between generations has weakened – all this is interconnected with a generally weakened sense of social belonging. The most revolutionary factor underlying this is non-parental transmission (the loose ties between generations), superbly analysed by the evolutionary psychologists Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd at the University of California in their 2005 book Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (see further my book Arv och miljö [‘Inheritance and Environment’], 2009).

The housing construction in 1960s Sweden was, for a short time, the most visible manifestation of a society bent on equality, which claimed to be (almost) classless. Foreign delegations announced their arrival in order to familiarise themselves with the vaunted Swedish model through the Million Home neighbourhoods. On their tours, visitors were amazed by the well-planned designs and all mod cons of apartments. Their surprise was even greater when they learnt that manual labourers and engineers could live side by side in two-bedroom flats in the same building. Which one was the manual labourer, which one the engineer?

But soon enough, after a decades-long housing shortage, the housing market was taken by surprise with an overproduction of apartments for rent. Then everything quickly changed. The large number of unrented apartments led to an influx of households with social problems, the kind that had often been turned down before. All immigrants were welcome, even new arrivals who had waited far too short a time in housing queues. As a result of this new situation, the construction industry turned its sights to the other housing market, one where there had long been a big demand. The result was a boom in the construction of houses.

I was a researcher in the architecture department of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in those years and got to know these new home-owning Swedes, with their uncertain class background, young and child-bearing, in terrace houses and detached houses with carports and garages, backyards and manicured lawns. Some formed community associations that welcomed their good neighbours to discussions about communal playgrounds and spring cleaning – a new sense of belonging.

Nonetheless, many Swedes at this time continued to vote for the Social Democrats, convinced that it was their party that had made it possible for them to leave the working class. What they had gained was modernity, the IKEA society, the emphasis on a youthful lifestyle, summer cottages and charter holidays, “TV in the kids’ room,” videos, crisps, red wine and vodka, barbeques and trampolines. It was really elevated status, accentuated by the sight of housing complexes they had left behind that were increasingly populated by immigrants.

Where did the identity of “worker” go? The new Swedish communities of Vällingby and Farsta, so highly acclaimed in the 1950s, gave no hint of the transformation to come. “I’m just a typical worker” was still heard here and there, an apologetic class consciousness. In those days, owning a car was as rare as owning a summer cottage, and it would take a good while before the working class could imagine themselves lying out in the sun on the beaches of the Canary Islands.

While holiday habits still distinguish between classes, they do not constitute clear class markers; nor does ownership of a summer house, detached house or condominium. In the working world, many factory workers are “professionals” who are responsible for machinery worth millions. In conspicuously clean facilities, they oversee electronically controlled production systems and run computers. The working world is not the same. Rubbish men no longer haul bags on their backs and can earn more than university teachers. The valuable export goods in forests are sawn and stripped of bark using control levers. Machinery operators do not stand in snow banks but instead sit in cockpits like aeroplane pilots.

It is said that, globally, the number of working class labourers has increased fourfold over the last twenty-five years, while the Swedish working class has shrunk. Have immigrants assumed the place of the proletariat of our time? No, you can’t say that. For fifty years, Sweden, which was one of the world’s most demographically homogeneous countries, is now among the most heterogeneous. Moreover, nowadays, non-native Swedes are found at every level.

So too, the self-image of Sweden’s native-born population has changed as a result of immigration. Some people who previously viewed themselves as highly-qualified “skilled workers” would today prefer to call themselves “Swedes” every now and then. It’s no surprise then that people’s psychological need for a positive self-image starts to take advantage of new opportunities. The need to see oneself in a positive light is satisfied by the ever-present cultural hierarchies. The articulated aversion to immigrants both in society and in people’s local environment provides a way to move up the self-perceived scale of values.

Every era has its hierarchies and class markers. In Stockholm, the Södermalm dialect, “Söder slang,” was once the sociolect of the working class, one that still survives here and there among the older generation. Within the socially homogeneous boundaries of this part of the city, there was as little stigmatism using Söder slang as there was using the “Kal å Ada” sociolect in the working class section of Gothenburg. It was outside one’s own neighbourhood that dialects and sociolects were the subject of clear hierarchisations. Today, it is ethnolects that are the subject of the liveliest debates.

In a survey of attitudes among teacher candidates, the people interviewed tended to perceive people who spoke a provincial Swedish dialect as “more human.” Others described people who spoke provincial dialects as “kind,” “slow” and “naïve.” On the other hand, people who spoke the standard variant gave the impression that they were “more competent.” Immigrants who spoke “ethnolects” were perceived as more “nonchalant,” and to a greater extent than those who spoke a working class sociolect, which was of course also considered to be stigmatised, “but to a lesser extent.” (Andrew Johansson, Master’s thesis, Växjö University, 2006)

Again, identifying status is a disposition dictated by evolution. According to an article in the Economist (13/4 2009), the American satirist H.L. Mencken once said that status as “a wealthy man” meant earning “100 dollars more than your brother-in-law.” Because status is a “moving target,” there is no such thing as “enough money.” The same comparative measure applies at times to men’s access to young women. Many rapes including gang rape give high prestige in some circles.

Arson should not be compared to fireworks. What arson produces is a boosting of the perpetrator’s self-confidence, which may otherwise fluctuate from day to day. Burning down shops, schools and daycare centres is not senseless, as people say; nor is preventing firefighters and police officers from doing their job. Having power in one’s hands for a few hours gives status in its own ways. It is also rewarded by women, most likely somewhat younger than those attracted to manly initiative-taking, risk-seeking robbers of armoured vehicles.

Notorious shoplifters and welfare cheats, tax-evading manual labourers and con artists also belong to the working world, but which class? Will the working class, viewed in this light, maintain its position as a field of research? Obviously, there are more acute questions related to ideology and ethics awaiting scientific interpreters.

In that case, what methods will be used to tackle this disparate category, one that doesn’t even have a name? There are many hybrids here. Long days working in the legal labour market, coupled with creative tax planning and insider crime as inventive side jobs – upper or lower middle class? How do we compartmentalise the next generation of ethnolect-speaking cancer researchers, insurance adjusters, train dispatchers, pizza makers and government officials? In what table will sociologists place the cream of the crime syndicates, who never allow themselves to be interviewed, the ones with another residence in London and a vacation home on the Côte d’Azur? The ones who send their well-behaved children to private schools abroad? Will statisticians classify the highly skilled criminal social class as upper class or lower class? What are we to guess about their own self-ascribed position in the social hierarchy?