Title: Structured Imbalances of Gratification: The Case of the Caribbean Mating System
Abstract: A description and analysis of the sex life of Negro peasants in a community of Eastern Trinidad will reveal how a social system that is based on complementarity between sexual partners nevertheless presents such asymmetry that its equilibrium is extremely precarious. The notion of equilibrium, if useful at all, must be seen in relation to those disequilibrating forces which seemingly stable systems create in the course of their operation. Just as a figure cannot be perceived except in relation to the ground in which it is imbedded, so the notion of balance gains significance only when it is examined in relation to the imbalances which it may occasion even as it attempts to contain them. In order to search for sources of disequilibrium, we can turn to the same theoretician who originated the notion of equilibrium in social systems. Strangely enough, when modern sociologists discovered in Pareto the concept of social system, they overlooked Pareto's equally important notions concerning disequilibrium. The idea of disturbance and imbalance is implicit in Pareto's distinction between what he calls 'utility for' and 'utility of' a community. An item that can be said to have maximum utilityfor the community is one through which each individual attains the maximum possible satisfaction. In contrast, utility of a community refers to the maximum utility not of individuals but of the group or society as a whole. Economists, Pareto argued, can only treat the problems of utility for the community since they can only consider wants of individuals which are heterogeneous and whose satisfactions therefore cannot be added up to yield a measure of the maximum utility for the entire group or society. In sociology, however, matters are different, '[A community] can be considered, if not a person, at least as a unity.'1 The maximum utility to a society can be analysed sociologically, and, this being the crux of the matter for our present purposes, it may not necessarily coincide with the maximum satisfaction of the wants of the individual
Publication Year: 1972
Publication Date: 1972-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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