Worldbuilding 101: Social Stratification

Recently, I watched a round table published by World Anvil (it’s linked below) entitled Social Dynamics in Worldbuilding. The discussion scratched the surface of something that I could spend hours, days, or maybe a lifetime exploring. Out of the hour long video, I picked out one topic that I found particularly interesting: social stratification. This is an aspect of creating a world that’s both fascinating and inherent to most of the fantasy fiction that I gravitate toward.

What makes a caste vs. a class?

In the round table, Guy, The Great GM, makes the claim that the difference between caste and class is that in castes are rigid and people cannot climb out of their place in society whereas classes are only dictated by birth and wealth and people can navigate between through work and determination. Digging a little deeper into this, I found that Edmund Leach had six criteria that defined a caste (3):

1. Endogamy: marriage only within a specific group as required by custom or law.
2. Restriction on commensality: the practice of eating together within a social group.
3. Status hierarchy
4. Concepts of pollution: the idea that the purer members of the upper caste must stay away from the impure. Both mental and physical aspects are involved in this concept that limits the intermingling of castes.
5. Association with a traditional occupation: in many instances, the lower castes are marked by an occupation that is deemed unclean. Examples might include those who attend to cemeteries, prisons, or toilet cleaning. In feudal Japan, the lower caste, burakumin, was inclusive of leather workers, armourers, temple dancers, fishermen, and gypsies as well (1). In several African cultures, artisans are also considered lower in the caste systems (2, 3).
6. Membership ascribed by birth: This part touches on the statement Guy makes in the video about the caste being rigid. People born to one caste has no mechanism to find his or her way into another caste.

Restrictions that indicate stratification

Many times in fiction writing, I look to history to guide the elements I include in my novels. In researching this, I’ve found some fascinating new material that serves as sparks for intricate elements that could be included in a new literary world. This is something I love about writing…I frequently get to learn something along with creating something I hope others will enjoy. Consider the following identifiers that might be included to embellish a story:

• Style restrictions
  • Clothing color or design
  • Laws may direct lower classes to avoid specific adornments
  • Hairstyles may be regulated
  • Requirement or forbidding of the use of head coverings (The Handmaid’s Tale)
  • Forbidding certain cosmetic practices. This one depends on the cultural norms, but in feudal Japan, women of eta were restricted from shaving their eyebrows and blackening their teeth (1). That’s not something I’d call desirable, but fashion does change through time, right?
• Time restrictions – possibly a specific class or caste would only be allowed inside the city walls during daylight hours or after dark.
• Verbal stratification
  • The first thing that pops into my mind with this is cockney…indicative of class if not caste.
  • Possibly grammar usage is slightly varied. For example the use of “ain’t” vs. “aren’t.”
  • Differences in slang
• Patterns of association
  • Where I grew up, this would be called “social graces.”
  • In feudal Japan, burakumin would speak more freely and be more open with their words. The strict customs of the common Japanese weren’t practiced by the lower caste (1).

Sensitivity Issue

As a final note, I want to mention that this topic can be highly sensitive. My intent with this post (as with all my fiction writing) is to explore history, culture, society, and the general human experience. I believe strongly that all societal patterns are developed for reasons that are logical to someone or some group. Reading and writing about those topics are my mechanism to understand and grow wiser in the ways of our wonderful world.

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Free Worksheet

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References:

1. Newell, William H., 1964. Caste in Japan. The Economic Weekly. February 1964. p. 229-234.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_systems_in_Africa#cite_note-Levine2014p56-2. Note: I typically refrain from citing Wikipedia directly, but in this case, I could spend hours digging into the multitude of information presented in this area. At some point, I might come back and do further research on the castes and tribes in Africa. It’s truly captivating!
3. https://books.google.com/books?id=NZHeBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA56&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false This is more on in Ethiopia…another resource I might come back to in the future.