Hund, W.D. (2003). Inclusion and Exclusion: Dimensions of Racism. https://forschungsnetzwerk.ams.at/dam/jcr:6efc3c21-e1a6-4b6a-bfa5-d9618e734d4d/2003_wr_zeitschrift_art_hund.pdf
Abstract
Men have continually shaped their communal life as exaction. Their social relations exist as a mesh of command and subordination, dominance and obedience, exploitation and submission, power and alienation. Philosophers, of course, maintain that the orders of inequality which originate in this way are natural; but Utopias manifest the mistrust of such a doctrine from the outset. The dream of social justice interferes with the reality of hierarchically structured societies. It makes the lower classes malcontent and the upper classes talkative. Occasionally the former express their annoyance in insurrections and revolts; the latter regularly narrate about the beauty and expediency of difference. In doing so they put up with a limited stock of metaphors. Common motifs delineate society as being a ship or a body. Both should make understandable that social life requires supremacy. A ship without a captain starts pitching. A body without a head loses orientation. 1 The narration about the functionality of the hierarchically structured whole includes ideas concerning the inequality of its parts. The limbs of the body and the members of the crew are not considered as being equivalent. The social legend of the shared identity of unequal individuals is combined with myths about their descent. In Athens all citizens were to be convinced that they were members of the polis and therefore relatives. Nevertheless, they were to be divided into classes because the gods had added gold, silver, or iron to them appropriate to their social function. In Peru it was said that the sun had hatched out human beings from three different eggs: the chiefs from a golden egg, their wives from a silver one, and all the men and women of the labouring classes from a copper one. 2 * All quotations from other than English sources have been translated. Italics or similar emphases in the originals are not included.