Super-ordination and Subordination
Chapter Sixty-Five
Syllabus topic 3.1, "Social Processes- ... super-ordination and subordination"
Pages 289 to 292 of 451
In one line
Super-ordination and subordination is the process by which one party comes to occupy a higher position and another a lower, and both come to treat the arrangement as normal.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: super-ordination and subordination is the social process by which persons or groups are ranked above and below one another in a relationship of authority, prestige or power, so that one commands and the other complies. It is a form of accommodation, being one of the ways a conflict is settled, and it is the process by which stratification is produced and maintained; where the arrangement is accepted by both parties as proper, it has become legitimate authority.
How it happens
Four routes are usually given, and giving the routes rather than a definition alone is what makes an answer analytical.
By conquest or force. The strongest party imposes the ranking, and it is maintained by coercion for so long as the strength lasts.
By ascription. The ranking is fixed at birth and never contested within the person's life. Caste is the type case, and gender within a patriarchal household is another.
By achievement and competition. The ranking is the outcome of a contest, as in a promotion or an election.
By consent and function. The ranking is accepted because the parties agree it is necessary for a purpose, which is what an employment relation, a classroom or an army claims to be.
Its characteristics
- It is universal. Every society and every organised group ranks its members in some respect.
- It is relational. Neither position exists without the other.
- It is situational. The same person is superordinate in one relation and subordinate in another, which is [Status and Role]: a clerk who commands at home, a judge who is a junior member of a club.
- It requires acceptance to be stable. A ranking maintained only by force is expensive and precarious; one accepted as proper needs almost no enforcement.
- It is expressed symbolically: forms of address, seating, dress, order of precedence, who may speak first and who must wait.
- It is a process, and therefore reversible. This is the point of treating it here rather than only in Module I.
Power, authority and legitimacy
The distinction is Weber's and it belongs here, though it is worked in [Weber: Power and Authority].
Power is the ability to secure compliance despite resistance. Authority is power regarded as rightful by those subject to it. The whole difference is legitimacy, and it is what converts a costly relation of coercion into a cheap and stable one.
How subordination becomes accepted. Through socialisation, which teaches the ranking as natural; through ideology, which supplies a justification, whether religious, biological or functional; through the symbols that display it daily; and through the absence of any visible alternative. This is Gramsci's hegemony and Marx's false consciousness from [Marx: Theory of Social Class and Social Conflict], and it explains the standing puzzle of why subordinated groups so often accept their position.
Super-ordination and Subordination
Where it operates
In the family: by age and by gender, as [Sex and Gender] describes.
In caste: the most complete Indian instance, ritually justified, ascribed at birth and formerly enforced by disabilities, from [Caste].
In the economy: employer and employee, landlord and tenant, creditor and debtor.
In organisations: every hierarchy, and Weber's bureaucracy in [Weber: Bureaucracy] is the fully rationalised form of it.
Between groups: dominant and subordinated communities, and colonially between nations.
In law itself: the court is a structure of super-ordination, expressed in every symbol of the courtroom, and this is the dramaturgy noticed in [Symbolic Interactionism].
How subordination is challenged
MU treats these as processes, so the answer should show the process running backwards, and this is what distinguishes a good answer.
Conflict, which is the primary means, from [Conflict]: the subordinated group ceases to accept the ranking and contests it.
Organisation. An unorganised subordinated group has numbers and no power; organised, it acquires the capacity to act, which is why the right to form associations and unions matters so much and why [Pressure Groups] belongs to the same story.
Withdrawal of legitimacy. Once the justification stops being believed, the arrangement must be maintained by force, and becomes expensive.
Law. The abolition of untouchability, the prohibition of discrimination, reservation in legislatures, public employment and education, the protection of tenants, and labour legislation are all attempts to alter a settled ranking by legal means. Their record is exactly the subject of [Law and Social Change], and it is mixed: they change the formal position immediately and the social position slowly.
Sanskritisation, from [Sanskritisation and Westernization], which changes a group's position without disturbing the ranking itself.
A worked example
Before reform. The landlord holds the land, the tenant cultivates it and hands over a share, and the arrangement is supported by the tenant's economic dependence, by caste, and by the absence of any alternative employment. Neither party experiences it as coercion. It is simply how things are, which is subordination in its stable, legitimate form.
What changed it. Alternative employment appeared, so the tenant acquired an exit. Tenancy legislation conferred rights of occupancy and restricted eviction. Adult franchise made the tenant's vote worth having. And organisation gave the tenants collectively what none had individually.
What did not change quickly. Forms of address, seating in the village, who speaks first at a meeting, and whom the landlord's family will marry. The symbolic expression of the ranking outlasted its economic basis by a generation, and that gap is the most useful observation in the chapter: legal and economic change moves faster than the ritual and symbolic order that expresses rank.
Super-ordination and Subordination
Quick revision
- Super-ordination and subordination is the process by which parties come to occupy higher and lower positions and to treat the arrangement as normal. It is a form of accommodation and the process behind stratification.
- Routes: conquest or force; ascription, as in caste; achievement and competition; consent and function.
- Characteristics: universal, relational, situational, requiring acceptance to be stable, expressed symbolically, and reversible.
- Power secures compliance despite resistance; authority is power accepted as rightful. Legitimacy is the whole difference, and it makes the relation cheap.
- Subordination is accepted through socialisation, ideology, symbols and the absence of alternatives (Marx's false consciousness, Gramsci's hegemony).
- It is challenged by conflict, organisation, withdrawal of legitimacy, law, and, without disturbing the hierarchy, by Sanskritisation.
- The symbolic expression of rank outlasts its economic basis, which is why legal change appears to fail in the short run.
Test yourself
1. Define super-ordination and subordination and say how the ranking arises. The process by which persons or groups come to be ranked above and below one another in authority, prestige or power, so that one commands and the other complies. It arises by conquest or force, where the stronger imposes the ranking; by ascription, where position is fixed at birth, as in caste; by achievement, where it results from competition; and by consent and function, where the parties accept the ranking as necessary for a purpose, as in employment.
2. Distinguish power from authority and say why the difference matters. Power is the ability to secure compliance despite resistance; authority is power that those subject to it regard as rightful. The difference is legitimacy, and it matters because it decides the cost of the relation: a ranking maintained by force alone requires continuous supervision and is precarious, while one accepted as proper is obeyed without enforcement and is extremely stable.
3. Why do subordinated groups often accept their position? Because acceptance is produced rather than chosen. Socialisation presents the ranking as natural from childhood; an ideology, religious, biological or functional, supplies a justification for it; the symbols of daily life, forms of address, precedence, seating, display and confirm it continuously; and where no alternative is visible, the arrangement appears to be the only way things can be. Marx described this as false consciousness and Gramsci as hegemony.
4. How is subordination challenged? By conflict, when the subordinated group ceases to accept the ranking and contests it; by organisation, which converts numbers into the capacity to act; by the withdrawal of legitimacy, after which the arrangement must be maintained by force and becomes expensive; and by law, through the abolition of disabilities, the prohibition of discrimination, reservation and protective legislation. Sanskritisation is a further route which raises a particular group's position while leaving the hierarchy itself untouched.
Super-ordination and Subordination
5. Why does the symbolic expression of rank outlast its economic basis? Because forms of address, precedence, seating, marriage rules and the manner of daily interaction are maintained by custom and socialisation rather than by the material arrangement that first produced them, and custom changes by drift while law and economic conditions can change on a stated day. The result is that a group may acquire legal rights and independent income while continuing to be treated, and to behave, as subordinate, which is why legal reform appears ineffective when measured too soon.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.