ABSTRACT
In British Guiana we have been faced with an entirely different situation, but we have tried to ducidate the structural framework of social relations by the same general method of approach as that used by social anthropologists working in what are usually termed 'primitive' societies. We have adhered to the theoretical principle that the unit of study is a whole society; in this case the whole of British Guiana is taken as constituting the total social system from an analytical point of view, but we have been concerned with particular aspects of the total social structure, isolated for special study according to a theoretical scheme. We have taken the colour/ class divisions to represent the ,major lines of differentiation within the total social system, and it is in the nature of the functional unity of the society that the units so differentiated are hierarchically arranged, being allocated different statuses, different degrees of political power and different social functions. Every social system has
internal differentiations of this order, but we have been primarily concerned with the basis on which the differentiation takes place rather than with the social function of the differentiation itself. It has been our contention that a primary base line for the differentiation of function, and of status, is the fact of ethnic identity, and this fact has important implications for the study of domestic relations. It would be a complete and complicated study in itself to analyse even the formal aspects of the total social system in full, and it must be made quite clear that we have not attempted to do this. Enough has been clarified to make it possible to state that in the villages with which weare most concerned we find that the bulk of the population constitutes a cohesive group bound by ties of kinship and territorial affiliation, and occupying a low position in the status system, both on account of the position of its members in the scale of values relating to ethnic characteristics, and because of the nature of the occupational, political, and other functions which they fulfil. In this case, ethnic characteristics are merely a convenient factor by which status and functions can be ascribed to individuals and groups. In other societies, as our comparison with a Scottish mining community shows, such cohesive low status groups can exist without the presence of an ethnic distinguishing 'badge', and other bases of ascription of status may exist such as birth into a particular family, possession of certain cultural characteristics and so on. Even in British Guiana, status and occupation can be changed to some extent by various means we have termed 'achievement', after Linton, but the institutionalized social values of the total social system lay less stress upon achievement than upon ascribed characteristics, and there is not a high rate of mobility in the status scale.
