Social Structures & Their Evolution — Part I
Class Warfare in a Society Paradoxically Obsessed with Equality
How our social structure is evolving toward greater social control…
It’s easy to assume, especially as an outsider or as someone who hasn’t yet been otherized, that everyone has the same level of opportunity in the United States, but the truth is, our social structure is quite a bit more nuanced than that. All one has to do to recognize this fact is to study our history as a nation. One important example of this lack of uniform opportunity is how African Americans have been treated historically. They were subjected to a rigid closed system within an already existing open class structure by force.
While African Americans are not (officially) subjected to this rigid closed system anymore, there are myriad ways in which our open class-based system could again allow for the development of a parallel rigid closed system that could exist right within our current social structure. One important way it could evolve to such a system is through health status. In this series, we’re going to focus on how the emerging surveillance model of medicine is pushing us toward such a social system but first, we need to define our terms.
