Month: June 2021

Many societies organize themselves along caste, class, or clan. Each of these terms represents a way a society organizes itself, though caste is something of a hybrid between class and clan. I put it first on the list because the list sounds better in that order. Give me a break. I’m a writer, not an academic.

Putting the Character in a Caste, Class, or Clan

These social structures divide people into groups and define a person’s position in society. Often, these groups place demands on and provide incentives to their members to keep them in their own group and keep outsiders out. These incentives often create conflict between the character’s wants and needs and the demands of his caste, class, or clan. That conflict can provide the drama for your fiction, either as the central drama or as background or subtext.

When writing fiction, the first thing to focus on isn’t plot or setting, but characters. Plot is what happens when your characters want something and something else is in the way. It is the nexus of desire and obstacle. Setting is the world your characters inhabit. One of the most important aspects of your character is where they fit in the society we have been building.

In this series of articles, I am focused on setting, but all along the way, I have tried to keep my eye on the ultimate goal: creating a rich world that informs your character’s decisions.

Class

The modern definition of class is a group sharing the same economic or social status, but we need to think of it in a broader sense. It is an order or ranking of a group of people having certain characteristics in common. The ranking implies a hierarchy within your society, but also people grouped together by certain characteristics.

We think of class as economic, but it doesn’t have to be. Many class systems throughout human history were based on occupation, but some were based on a certain social or legal status.

To tie it to economics, think about who is getting rich. Is it the priestly class? Warrior Class? Merchant Class? Who controls trade, land, or mines? Is it businesses, trading houses, families, clans, tribes, government, religion?

Upper vs Lower Classes

Drama requires conflict. The differences between classes has formed the basis of dramatic conflict throughout history. For example, there’s the Suddenly Suitable Suitor trope of stories like Aladdin. There are a ton of tropes along the lines of the Unable to Support a Wife line.

The upper classes tended to share common interests in advancing or maintaining their privileged status. If your characters, either hero or villain, has that status challenged, it might be a motivation for them to act. An inciting incident that challenges the status quo, such as a monster destroying their kingdom, would be a powerful motivation. E.g. Raya and the Last Dragon.

The converse of who is getting rich is who is staying poor, like peasants and slaves. Often, the poor have had some wealth taken away from them such as a weaker indigenous people without the resources or technology to defend against a stronger invading people.

Many characters from fiction come from the poorer classes. Their poverty often gives them the motivation to change their situation, putting them on a hero’s quest. Find the gold and save the family, only to learn that the family is more important than the gold.

Different Class Systems

When creating a fictional society, don’t be limited by the modern conception of class as a division between rich and poor. Human societies have organized themselves based on a myriad of class systems.

In Neolithic times, occupation determined social class, with farmers and craftsmen at the lower end, and priests and warriors at the higher. People with a surplus of goods (such as food items, textiles, obsidian and stone technology) had greater influence in society because they had what other people wanted. This created leverage and a sense of deference to those who had more. 

In Bronze age, we saw a greater differentiation in social classes. Priests and warriors grew in power while farmers and craftsmen diminished.

Classical Rome

In ancient Rome, society divided freeborn citizens into the patrician and plebian classes. The distinction was originally a divide between rich and poor, but the distinction eventually became hereditary. In addition to this distinction, later Roman society divided citizen from non-citizen. There was also an equestrian class system based on the amount of property one held. Finally, there was a huge class of slaves doing much of the hard labor of Roman society.

Chinese Four Occupations

Confucian China recognized four classes based on occupations: shi (gentry scholars and warriors), the nong (peasant farmers), the gong (artisans and craftsmen), and the shang (merchants and traders). These were less a socioeconomic class than an economic classification. This social system extended beyond China to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as well.

European Feudalism

Medieval Europe maintained a division between three classes: the nobility, the clergy, and and the peasants. Nobility was a political ruling class, usually just below royalty, not a socioeconomic class. While a noble might have had wealth and power, it was not a defining characteristic. Many nobles lost their wealth, but maintained their social status.

The Third Estate of the peasantry was much more diverse than the description implies. The class included not just agricultural peasants, but also beggars and urban laborers from artisans, shopkeepers, and commercial middle classes to wealthy merchants and bankers.

France maintained this system up to the French revolution, known as the three Estates of the Realm. The United States and Europe maintain a shadow of this system when we refer to the free press as the Fourth Estate.

Industrial Revolution

In the 14th century (after the Black Death) urbanization led to a separate class of merchants that became the seed for the Industrial Revolution in the 17th-19th centuries. The Industrial Revolution upended the medieval class system, leading to a search for a new definition of the social order.

In his analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Karl Marx defined class to be about who owns the “means of production”. The bourgeoisie (merchant class) owned the means of production (capital) and the proletariat (working class) worked for the bourgeoisie, thereby creating more capital.

These two classes grew out of the feudal system, with urban merchants becoming the bourgeoisie. As industrialism took hold, the nobility sold off their land and forced the peasants who had worked it to leave for urban factories. This new class of urban poor became the proletariat.

In the Marxist perspective, all the gains of the system accrued to the bourgeoisie, thereby impoverishing the proletariat.

Modern America

In 20th century United States, we had a conceptual division between the upper, middle and lower classes. In this perspective, the upper class were the rich, holding most of the wealth and power. The lower classes were the working class, either unemployed or holding low wage jobs. The middle class included people with typical-everyday jobs that pay above the poverty line. This group made up the bulk of society.

In the 21st century, we have seen a marked increase in income inequality since the Great Recession of 2008. Now, people are more likely to talk about the 1% vs the 99%. That is, 1% of society controls as much wealth as the bottom 90%. In this view, with such vast differences in wealth, the distinctions below the 1% are meaningless.

Choosing a Social System for your Fantasy World

Throughout human history, we have seen a wide variety of class systems. Which caste, class, or clan you apply to your world is up to you, but it is likely to make a difference in how your characters view the world.

Is your society hierarchical or egalitarian? Does the surplus of the economy accrue to the elite or is it spread broadly? Is there much social mobility? Is there slavery? These are questions you must ask in order to define your social structure.

Is social class and behavior laid down in law such as the Indian caste system, medieval European guilds, or serfdom?. You might decide that your fantasy society restricts membership in a group by religion, race, ethnicity, or gender as well as wealth. If your society has a racial minority, the dominant race might exclude them from certain more profitable occupations.

On the other hand, social mores might restrict the dominant race or religion from certain occupations. Those occupations might become profitable, in which case the dominant group would have to break custom to participate. As an example, because coal mining is dirty, only the lower classes might mine coal. If industrialization picks up and coal becomes valuable, then that class might be well situated to take advantage of its higher value.

Caste – Intermediate between Class and Clan

Caste is a hereditary social class that restricts the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes. It is like a clan because it is hereditary, but it is like class because it maintains an economic and social stratification. 

Caste is known mainly as a feature of Hindu society, but other, mainly south and southeast Asian, societies also have some form as well. For example, the historic relationship between Blacks and Whites in the United States has been described as a caste system.

Caste is based on occupation. It has a ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.

Similar to Confucian Chinese social structure, the Hindu caste system has four main groups based on ritual text (Varna), though it has thousands based on birth (Jati). The four Varna castes are the Brahmins (scholars and yajna priests), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (farmers, merchants and artisans) and Shudras (workmen/service providers).

Creating a caste system for your own fantasy world would require much research and work. You would need to define the classes first. Then create the rituals and customs of society that create the rules of interaction between them. You might need to create a religious system before a caste system. One option is to create a class system based on occupation, then figure out the rules of the caste system when you define your religions.

Clans and Tribes

Clan and tribe systems are the most common and universal social structures in human societies. Clans are large groups of families related by kinship, often descended from a single person. E.g. according to legend, the Julii of Rome descended from a mythical person Iulus, the son of Aeneas of Troy. Julius Caesar was its most famous member, but the clan predated him by at least 400 years.

Most preindustrial societies organized themselves by clan. Later Neolithic and Bronze Age societies organized into small and medium-sized chiefdoms that struggled for dominance between various powerful families.

In societies where institutional structures have broken down, social structures might revert to tribe and clan organization. Post-war Iraq in the 21st century is a good example of this.

Clans might specialize in certain occupations, especially in caste societies. For example, many gangs of organized crime follow family or clan lines, such as the Italian Mafia.

Sometimes there is a class hierarchy within a clan. Sometimes the clans fall out along a class hierarchy. For example, in ancient Rome, a client was a minor member of a his patron’s clan (gens), but each gens was defined as either patrician or plebian.

Clan Organization and Structure

Tribal and clan structures differ from culture to culture. Often, a clan is a smaller part of a larger society such as a tribe or chiefdom. Clans may have an official leader such as a chief, matriarch or patriarch, or a council or elders. In others, people would have to achieve leadership positions.

They might be patrilineal or matrilineal. For example, in Roman society one’s father determined one’s gens. Among the Tlingits of Southeast Alaska, children are born to the mother’s clan and gain their status within her family.

Clans might further break down in smaller families, such as the houses (hít) of the Tlingit or the stirpes of the Romans.

Clans might belong to larger groups within a society, such as patrician or plebian among the Romans or the Eagle, Raven, or Wolf moieties of the Tlingit.

Rules and Customs

Often times, certain rules or social customs control the relationships between or among clans. These rule most often apply to marriage restrictions. For example, a member of the Eagle moiety in Tlingit culture may only marry a member of the Raven moiety.

In many societies, there is no concept of private property. A clan or a house within a clan owned all the property. This is true of classical Rome, where the pater familias owned all property. The familia was the basic economic and social unit of Roman society.

In Hawaii, the upper caste Ali’i owned all the land, which Ali‘i Nui then split among his followers, similar to European feudalism. Among the Tlingit, each clan owns its own history, songs, crests, and totems.

Caste, Class, and Clan in Fantasy Societies

The variety of class-based or tribe and clan-based social organization allows a writer of fiction wide latitude in creating interesting social structures. While I would not recommend using lengthy exposition to describe the intricate details of social ritual, it would be fun to create a character in your story who is limited by social rules.

One can imagine a Romeo and Juliet story where two lovers can’t see each other because they are from clans in the same moiety or from upper class and lower class clans or castes. I’m sure those stories exist in just about every culture as cautionary tales. It’s a story as old as humanity.

Applying Caste, Class, and Clan in Pancirclea

In my demonstration world of Pancirclea, I have decided on a class system among the Savannah culture, a caste system for the Hillfolk, and a clan system among the Silvans.

Hillfolk

Hillfolk culture divides society among four classes similar to the Hindu Varna: warriors and rulers, scholars and priests, merchants, and peasants. In addition, there is an underclass of slaves.

Unlike the Hindu castes, Hillfolk culture has no ritual restrictions on how they interact with each other. Also, there are no restrictions on mobility between the classes. A person may move between classes, though there may be economic or other barriers to social mobility.

In addition to classes, the Hillfolk have a clan system, though it is less strict than that of the Silvans. These clans specialize in certain occupations, so fall mainly into one or another class. For example, one clan might control the army, so fall in the warrior class. Another clan might fall into the merchant and tradesmen class.

Savannah

The Savannah culture has four castes similar to the four main classes of the Hillfolk culture. In addition, there is a large underclass of slaves made up mainly of Silvans that exists outside the caste system.

The four castes include strict restrictions on who can be a member of a caste as well as how the castes interact. Members of the four main castes may not interact with slaves. Only the top two castes of warrior rulers and scholar priests may own them and only their owners may interact with them with certain exceptions.

Religious rules and sacred texts govern these restrictions. We will explore this more when we discuss religion in a later article.

Silvan

Silvan culture is more egalitarian. There is no class or caste system though there are richer and poorer members of society. Their culture is divided into tribes, clans, and houses. These family units make up the political organization of the Silvans as well, with councils of clans made up of the leaders of houses and councils of tribes made up of the leaders of clans.

Tribes control large regions within the Silvan territory, though clans within a tribe might exist throughout that tribe’s territory. There are three main groups of clans (phratries) within Silvan society. One may only marry into a clan outside one’s own phratry.

The phratries are Eagle, Panther, and Gorilla in the south, Eagle, Cougar, and Bear in the north.

Create Your Own Social Structures

As you can see, with a little forethought and research, you can create your own caste, class, or clan system for your fantasy world. Whether you have one or more societies, it isn’t difficult to create social structures that give your characters more depth and add more complex and compelling themes to your fiction.

Comments closed