Walton R. Johnson

Are ‘whites’ in South Africa really ready for democracy?

Humankinds proclivity towards social domination is constantly thwarting the thirst for democracy. Consequently, understanding dominance behavior will go a long way towards helping resolve conflicts rooted in social hierarchy and towards assisting movements for social equality. Ethnography from South Africa shows that, during change to greater democracy, socially high ranking individuals can experience a deeply personal crisis because the values and worldviews enshrined in such change are antithetical to those which have long been functional for their ascribed positions. As a result, parts of these individuals resist democratization.

George Clement Bond on Inequality

Using ethnography from a 1995 ‘race’ crisis at Rutgers University, I show the applicability of George Bond’s writings on inequality. Bond’s ideas about social constructions of the past, organic ideologies, and people’s acceptance of structures that subjugate them, are discussed to demonstrate the use of ‘hoaxes’ and clientage in the Rutgers episode. The discussion occurs in the broader context of theory about social inequality and social dominance.