Woolgar - Wosu

Woolgar’s piece really illuminated to me the interconnectedness of the household and society through his depiction of the gentle-servants. The gentle-servants attended to their lords not only inside the house but also outside the house. The translation of etiquette from the internal to the external shows not only the household affecting the society, but also an upholding of the household's influence in the society.The household’s influence is further portrayed when you see the gentle servants attend to the lord’s friends in the same manner as they would attend the lord (I assume the lord’s friends are of the same social standing as he.)

By treating the lord’s friends in the same way, they help to strengthen the seam of stratification into the societal fabric. For something to be legitimized in society, it must not only be created, but people’s actions must uphold it. "Households (made up of individuals) make up society," like Danielle said in class.

It led me to think about the ways by which we, as people in today’s twenty-first century society, learn about our place in society from within our households and go on to maintain this "place" in our interactions with others. I questioned if some of the assertions that Woolgar makes in his exploration of the Great household bear relevance today. Some of the most interesting of these assertions were: that the preservation of status was a function of the Great Household, and that “perception of difference was sharper [in the Great household] than elsewhere” (p. 18).

The conclusion I reached was yes! Woolgar's assertions have some relevance in our time. To explore Woolgar's argument that differences in society are apparent in the household, I thought about an employer and a maid relationship. In America and most parts of the world today, if one employs a maid, he/she will most likely not be of the same socio-economic status as the employer. Although the employer will (hopefully) respect the maid, the maid is not treated like a family member. Richer people usually employ poorer people as maids and even in our present day equal society, socio-economic differences still rear their heads in interactions between maids and employers. These differences underlie interactions between us and people who are of a different socio-economic class.

To show and reinforce their societal statuses, families will usually buy houses (not all the time, but for the most part) near people of similar social standing. Finally, we often hear of people going into careers (that they might or might not like) because perhaps, coming from a prestigious family, they have a reputation to maintain.

CAVEAT: The discussion in class about individuals who do not currently belong to a household engenders a question of what happens to the households that these individuals had once maintained. Sometimes, these currently homeless individuals had been very pivotal (e.g. breadwinners) to the functioning of their households. It might be interesting to look at how the disintegration of such key persons contributes to reproduction of homelessness, mental illness etc in society?