Chapter 6: Eurasian Social Hierarchies

The story at the beginning of the chapter stood out a lot to me. It is about a 26 year old Hindu woman looking for a partner by placing personal ads. The personal ads allow (or possibly require?) a person to list themselves in what caste they are in. The fact that the caste system is referred to at all is interesting, but the fact that it still in the 21st century impacts partnerships shows a lot about how the culture is influenced by its roots.

The rest of chapter goes into details of how hierarchies worked in different Eurasian countries and that it has only been in last 250 years that slavery, women's rights, and relationships between men and women have been challenged and altered for the better of humans. Today we take things such as women's rights or abolition of slavery lightly because we never really got to see how oppressive these things were. We also feel like it's from a different time in history that does not concern us, but the truth is that it really did not happen long ago and these issues still show up today and are important.

The chapter goes on to talk about China and India and how their social systems worked. It was interesting to learn that the Chinese hierarchy was the same for over 2,000 years which to me shows how strong of a government they had. The Chinese had a system that favored families who were wealthy and could afford to send their sons to school. In India, it was what family you were born into that mattered most, and if a person in the highest caste killed someone of the lowest caste it was treated as if they had killed a dog. Both these societies offered little chance to move up in class and it seems that where you were born was the most important thing to ensure an easy life. In America we like to think that if you work hard you can move up in the world, and while that's true, it is also true that where you were born does make a difference in how hard of a life you will have. It makes a difference in how people see you, how you will be treated in school, and ultimately where you get a job. We like to think that class discrimination is a thing of the past and is extinct, and although it may not be as prominent, it exists and goes on everyday.