Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

118 ENVY AS SEEN BY THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
cated here is the psycho-social dynamic, the source of numerous socially
or culturally derived regulations usually known as 'sumptuary laws. '
Sociology of sexual jealousy
The American sociologist Kingsley Davis analyses jealousy and sexual
possession as examples for his functional theory of society. He thinks it
may seem surprising that an individual emotion, something purely
psychological, might contribute to an understanding of culture and
social organization, yet he attributes to jealousy a function not only in
the individual's emotional state, but also in his immediate linkage to
social organization:
. . . the manifestations of jealousy are determined by the normative and
institutional structure of the given society. This structure defines the
situations in which jealousy shows itself and regulates the form of its
expression. It follows that unless jealous behaviour is observed in different
cultures, unless a comparative point of view is adopted, it cannot be
intelligently comprehended as a human phenomenon. 9
The same applies to envy. Curiously enough, Davis concerns himself
with it only incidentally, seeing it, in contrast to jealousy, not as the
attitude of a possessor but as that of an observer or potential rival who
would like to have what another has without envisaging any possibility of
getting it away from him. Envy, he says, cannot assert itself simultaneously
with jealousy in the same person, since the latter emotion
presupposes a certain right. Other authors, as we have seen, believe in
the possibility of a blend of jealousy and envy, each intensifying the
other. Davis sees in envy an inevitable phenomenon of all social life.
Anyone who has not got everything that he has been led to regard as
desirable will be envious of others. 'But since envy usually goes contrary
to the established distribution of this world's valuables, it is
frowned upon by the group as a whole. ' 10
Davis shows in detail how wrong those writers were who have seen in
sexual jealousy the expression of a completely physical state of affairs.
9 K. Davis,HumanSociety, NewYork,1949, p. 175.
lOOp. cit., p. 182.