Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

identity construct #2: class 105
rich and never performed manual labor. Society defi ned aristocrats as meritorious
people by virtue of the family line into which they were born. Peasants
were believed to be born into to a lower order of people destined to toil.
Fate determined one’s position in life.
An aristocratically based society justifi ed inequality through a form of
essentialism, often identifi ed as a bloodline. Aristocratic families were believed
to possess a special essence that they passed down to their relatives.
This essence distinguished them from the members of the third estate and
justifi ed their privileges. For this reason, class mobility was nonexistent.
People were born, lived, and died as members of a particular class or estate,
and so did their descendants.
Since humans are intelligent and complex, many people at the time recognized
this system as an ideological project rather than an inalienable condition.
Even so, these opponents of it remained in the minority, confronted
by a powerful religious, legal, social, political, and economic norm that promoted
differentiation based on birthright. One of the main challenges to
this system came from a new economic sector that emerged steadily and
slowly over the centuries. It was known as the bourgeoisie, literally the
“town dwellers,” and also occasionally called the middle class. They were
not members of the aristocracy, and neither were they peasants. They lived
in cities and engaged in commerce or early forms of factory production. In
time, as the economy of the West gained in complexity and became more
international, some members of the bourgeoisie became fabulously wealthy,
surpassing most, if not all, of their aristocratic counterparts. Despite their
wealth, the bourgeoisie remained legally and socially inferior to aristocrats
purely by virtue of their birth.
Owing in part to the emergence of this amorphous middle sector, new
philosophical ideas began to take hold that offered an alternative defi nition
of human existence. These ideas, which would become the foundation
of contemporary Western societies, were the core values of the
Enlightenment—humans are born equal before the law and have the right
to exchange goods and services in a free market, and government is subject
to their will. These ideas, and many others like them, required decades, if
not centuries to coalesce into solidifi ed political programs, and the process
goes on, as societies continue adjusting their lived reality to parallel these
ideals. Most contemporary Westerners take for granted that status by birth
is an antiquated principle rightly replaced by new ideas that better refl ect
the true state of human nature.
Today’s Enlightenment-based societies, which include the United States,
continue to exhibit class inequality, albeit in reduced extremes compared
with premodern societies. However, these modern societies still need to