Livro teoria da dominância social

Opinião de um leitor q. Gostei muito.  fonte: Amazon

Do You Want to Know Why Hierarchies Exist in Human Society?

ByJeffon July 4, 2014

I bought this book about 5 years ago, read it then and just re-read it. For those who aren't sure if they want to buy the book, I'd recommend searching for a PowerPoint presentation on the book created by Dr. Brian Paciotti - do a search on that name to find his website. Then, click on "Teaching" and "Interethnic Contacts" - the PowerPoint presentation is Lectures 9 & 10. Dr. Paciotti has admirably summed up the arguments in the book and reading through his presentation will give you an idea of whether or not you want to buy the book. I found the book's thesis to be sound because the core of the argument is that in all human societies which generate an economic surplus (this leaves out hunter-gatherer societies), there are three characteristics: discrimination based on age, gender and what Sidanius and Pratto call "abstract-set" discrimination. Abstract sets are every other form of discrimination that the human mind can come up with except age and gender discrimination and we all know there are hundreds of varieties of these kinds of discrimination. The authors' theories are influenced by Marxism and sociobiology, among other ideas, which I find quite interesting. What I also find interesting is that since the book was published, it appears that Jim Sidanius has not pursued any further research into the theory. The other author, Felicia Pratto, has, but accessing her work is next to impossible, unless you are an academic and have ready access to an academic library. This is because she has apparently not written a book on the theory yet - she has, instead, written quite a number of articles for scholarly journals which are unfortunately behind paywalls. I'd still recommend the book, though I have to say that for the lay person, all of the statistical proofs of the arguments are rather tedious to wade through. If you back up and take a look at the bird's eye view of the theory, though, it surely answers an awful lot of questions and I recommend it for that reason. Some of the topics covered in the book are Social Dominance Orientation, Hierarchy Enhancing legitimating myths, Hierarchy Attenuating legitimating myths and, most intriguingly for me, a section that essentially says that the dominated groups in society are not victims but actively engage with their oppressors in a dialectical manner. The book is thought-provoking and if you are interested in why history is marked by struggles between different social groups, this book will provide a lot of answers. You may not agree with them, but your beliefs will be challenged.

If, after reading this book, you are interested in further explorations, I'd recommend reading the work of John T. Jost. His most recent book, Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification, published in 2009, is prohibitively expensive, but you can find links to many of his published scholarly articles by going to the website of New York University, clicking on "Faculty" and doing a page search for "Jost". His page is the second one down in the list and you can read many of his articles there.