Respectable Lives

Where do we get our notions of social hierarchy and personal worth? What underlies our beliefs about the goals worth aiming for, the persons we hope to become? Elvin Hatch addresses these questions in his ethnography of a small New Zealand farming community, articulating the cultural system beneath the local social hierarchy. Hatch argues that, like people everywhere, these New Zealanders care very much about respectability, and he sets out to understand what that means to them. Hatch describes a complex body of thought, which he calls a cultural theory of social hierarchy, that defines not only the local system of social rank, but personhood as well. Because people define respectability differently and try to advance their definitions over those of others, a crucial part of Hatch's approach is to examine the processes by which these differences are worked out over time. Other social scientists posit a natural, universal human tendency to admire certain qualities, such as wealth or power, which they claim are easily identifiable in any society. Hatch argues against this view, showing that any given social hierarchy is not "natural" but culturally constructed and can be seen only when viewed from the local perspective. The observer cannot "see" the hierarchical order without entering into the cultural world of the people themselves. The concept of occupation is central to Hatch's analysis, since the work that people do provides the skeletal framework of the hierarchical order. He focuses in particular on sheep farming and compares his New Zealand community with one in California. Wealth and respectability among farmers are defined differently in the two places, with the result that California landholders perceive a social hierarchy different from the New Zealanders'. Thus the distinctive "shape" that characterizes the hierarchy among these New Zealand landholders and their conceptions of self reflect the distinctive cultural theory by which they live.