8 - The deep structure of moral categories, eighteenthcentury French stratification and the Revolution

Summary

I shall apply structural analysis to the system of moral categories into which any society's population is classified, to the categories of the stratification of the old régime in eighteenth-century France, and discuss how the deep structures of the stratification culture of the old society shaped the nature of the Revolution which abolished that stratification structure.

The social functions of moral categories

In every society there are some categories into which people can be classified that pervade their whole lives: child–adult; male–female; citizen–alien; black–white; crazy–sane are examples of such categories in the United States. Further, there are other categories that pervade particular situations or social systems: in a house there is the owner or renter (and his or her family) and the guests. These categories dominate the situation of the particular house, in the sense that few of a guest's acts are not affected by his being a guest.

Furthermore, these categories have extension into the larger institutional order. If a guest oversteps his rights, the police and the courts will distinguish the tenant from the guest. If an insane person comes to criminal court he or she will be treated differently from a sane person. Blacks appear in the administrative records of fair employment enforcement with a different significance than do whites. Children are required to go to school – adults not.