Caste as a Cooperative Economic Entitlement Strategy in Chiefdoms and States

In human societies, groups provide individuals with social and economic opportunities.  People may be born into some types of groups (such as ethnic groups) or may voluntarily join and leave groups in their lifetimes (such as guilds, unions, and clubs).  Most groups have an economic effect in which networks of interaction either directly or indirectly enable group members to share information, obtain employment, or acquire goods and services.   This paper will focus on groups that are formed under conditions of economic duress in which group membership provides stability but also comes with a social cost.

Archaeological and historical data show that many labor-intensive traditions of craftmaking, such as pottery, metallurgy, and textile manufacturing, encompass a long period of apprenticeship that requires the cooperation of group members for the successful transfer of knowledge.  In some cases the heredity management is codified into “castes” which have moral overtones in addition to their economic specializations.  Higher-caste groups tend to treat lower-caste groups as socially inferior, even though lower-caste groups usually provide needed goods and services. 

This paper uses Amartya Sen’s (1981, Poverty and Famines) concept of “entitlement” to understand how caste emerged to encompass the paradox of essential services and low social status.  Case studies from the historical era of West Africa and the Indian subcontinent illustrate how caste develops as a response to sharp declines in economic conditions, in which strictly-defined occupational designations become beneficial to laboring groups, and in which low social status is accepted in exchange for a guarantee of livelihood.  The observations about group formation as a response to specific historically-contingent circumstances has implications for our understanding of how other types of groups, such as gangs and insurgencies, form in times of economic duress.