Status-group as social closure: the Jews

Abstract

We have examined the advantages created by property rights, by membership of a social order and by gender, but in addition, the exclusionary closure by which specific social groups gain a privileged position for themselves at the expense of other groups can be grounded in ‘virtually any attribute — race, language, social origin, religion’. Closure in such cases is dependent upon inclusion within, or exclusion from, a status-group whose members share some ‘particular qualities, related in some way to lifestyle and social esteem’, even though they may be divided in terms of wealth and class position. This chapter examines the collectivist social exclusion experienced by the Jews of medieval England, a status-group who were defined as outsiders and inferiors on the basis of their religion. The Jews provide a useful test for the functionalist accounts of pre-industrial social structure offered by writers such as Mousnier and Fourquin in which social stratification is portrayed as a system of differential social prestige which rewards those who perform functions which are of particular importance, such as the provision of military protection in a period of military danger. The problem is, as these writers themselves emphasise, that the evaluation of specific social functions can sometimes, or even ‘usually’, be based upon criteria which are irrational and erroneous.