Modern Castes?

This might be the wrong place for this, because I don't really know where it should go. Anyway, I put it here because the tech level is about 1920s ish. So, what are possible castes that could be created for a modern society? The thing that makes it more challenging is that no caste is superior, so no ruler caste.
 
Military. There's plenty of families OTL where both spouses grew up on military bases, going on multiple generations.

Call it oedipal or whatever, but I've found women who grow up in military families are often interested in guys in the military. Add to that a professional military of substantial size for a few generations, frequent moves (preventing longterm ties to nearby off-base communities) and you've got a "caste" developing with its own distinctive culture.
 
possible castes

A caste system, to me, implies a relatively stagnant society--if things are changing a lot, then people can see change, and look to take advantage of it. Hence, I'll assume that it's 1920's tech, but not all that dynamic.

There could be a caste of coal heavers.miners/other physical labor. Children can be useful in these trades from the time they're very small--so they have no education, or even skills useful for other menial trades.

Engineers, in the sence of people that keep engines running, could be an arcane tradition pased on from father to son, might be a fairly powerful caste, as it keeps the heavy things running. Without their skill and muscle, not a single wheel can turn...

Anything complex can be its own caste, and the castes are interdependent. It's the handing down of knowlege, incomprehensible to other groups, that would allow organizations to become castes, cemented in time by traditions.

Priests, of course, can be their own caste, and if the god/devil/pantheon, supports castes (or, more likely, is proclaimed to do so by the priests) they'll be a very high caste indeed.

The caste of "Readers," might be critical--they're a sub-caste of the priestly or government (Or both) that read proposed books and articles for wrong ideas.

The longer the caste system is, the more likley it is to be broken down into more and more subcastes.

I would expect that there would need to be no significant external threat, becuase a caste system can be very wasteful of talent.
 
Military. There's plenty of families OTL where both spouses grew up on military bases, going on multiple generations.

Call it oedipal or whatever, but I've found women who grow up in military families are often interested in guys in the military. Add to that a professional military of substantial size for a few generations, frequent moves (preventing longterm ties to nearby off-base communities) and you've got a "caste" developing with its own distinctive culture.

Okay, I figured the military would be easy. I was also planning to have Sciences do their own thing, but after that it gets a little hazy to me.
 
Military. There's plenty of families OTL where both spouses grew up on military bases, going on multiple generations.

Call it oedipal or whatever, but I've found women who grow up in military families are often interested in guys in the military. Add to that a professional military of substantial size for a few generations, frequent moves (preventing longterm ties to nearby off-base communities) and you've got a "caste" developing with its own distinctive culture.

Yeah that was what had happened in Jack Campbell's 'Stark' novels. The military had almost become a separate society, outsiders joining was a rarity and the rest of society tended to either ignore them or regard them as alien, to the extent that live video of them fighting and dying in battle became a moneyspinner to generate extra military funding.

I would also suggest an 'underclass' caste; people growing up in ghettos without proper schools or amenities because the rest of society has essentially abandoned them. Even if the ghettos aren't physically walled off the stigma attached to them means that even those who aspire to rise above their background are constantly denied the opportunity.
 
Just to clarify, suppose this would have been good to say in the first place, the castes are developped out of a somewhat twisted sense of social darwinism.
 
Yeah that was what had happened in Jack Campbell's 'Stark' novels. The military had almost become a separate society, outsiders joining was a rarity and the rest of society tended to either ignore them or regard them as alien, to the extent that live video of them fighting and dying in battle became a moneyspinner to generate extra military funding.

I would also suggest an 'underclass' caste; people growing up in ghettos without proper schools or amenities because the rest of society has essentially abandoned them. Even if the ghettos aren't physically walled off the stigma attached to them means that even those who aspire to rise above their background are constantly denied the opportunity.

Each regiment living and raising their children in military cantonments could work. Cantonments were used to reeducate children from minority ethnic groups into loyal soldiers by the Ottoman and Russian Empires if I recall. For those who suck at proper soldiering, the fact that they live as a self-contained community means there are always plenty of support and in effect civilian positions, like being a teacher or a janitor, but within a community of all military families.

Similarly for the science/academic cast, they could live in university towns; with those unsuited to the life gaining employment to minimize members of outside castes until it is 100% all, in terms of heredity and how they were raised, science caste.

Considering there were already company towns in non-caste societies, having these sorts of broad castes would work. Really I can't imagine a caste system surviving with 20th century technology any other way; if the clerk at the factory isn't a member of the factoryworker caste, then castes are going to lose their meaning and just become more fluid economic classes. So for instance, the industrial caste would be the the vast majority of the inhabitants of the mine or mill town. As mentioned with the scientists and soldiers, members of the same families that do the primary occupation would be the ones providing most support occupations. It helps to prevent professors and soldiers coming from a mining town when miners' children are taught by teachers that are themselves children of miners who were also educated by children of miners, and the same with the police force not becoming soldiers.

How would you discourage/prevent emigration from caste communities and prevent the castes from mixing together in cosmopolitan trading centers as invariably happens?
 
How would you discourage/prevent emigration from caste communities and prevent the castes from mixing together in cosmopolitan trading centers as invariably happens?

Well, my military example draws from frequent postings of personnel from one base to another. Between that and building up major bases away from large population centres, it discourages folks from becoming close to a larger community.

Rather, the (small) neighbouring community becomes a garrison town, with much of the population being retired military families and close relations.

To foster folks staying in and encouraging their kids to follow, avoid significant changes in force levels. No sudden surges in strength outside of a war, no cashing in of peace dividends or drawdowns during government cutbacks. I was the second generation in a row told not to join because of government cuts in their father's time.

An academic corollary would be a university town. An out of the way community with a disproportionately large post-secondary presence. I'm thinking in particular of Kingston, Ontario. There's a major university, Queen's; a military university, Royal Military College; and St Lawrence College, another post-secondary school. The city itself has less than 125,000 people and around 30,000 full-time students. I do not have figures on graduate students and research staff.

Extending this, by emphasizing the expansion of schools in such concentrated academic communities, one could further divorce academics from society in general. Your society's still going to be sending folks to the schools for their undergrads, but the PhD's might find themselves with less ties outside the academic circle.

In either case, you're still "mixing with other castes", but you're concentrating the economic and demographic power of a single group into a community where it is diluted least. It follows that the children see the dominant examples and either follow suit or find a support niche within the circle. Cosmopolitan trading centres would still exist, but they're a starting point.

The next starting point that comes to mind, sucking up a number of the undergrad surplus, is the bureaucracy.
 
There's already a lot of caste going on. For instance, my little boy has two parents with engineering backgrounds and three grandparents with such backgrounds (defined as either a degree in an engineering discipline or job experience working in a field like chemical engineering).
 
There's already a lot of caste going on. For instance, my little boy has two parents with engineering backgrounds and three grandparents with such backgrounds (defined as either a degree in an engineering discipline or job experience working in a field like chemical engineering).
That's not really a caste, that's just coincidence.
 
There's already a lot of caste going on. For instance, my little boy has two parents with engineering backgrounds and three grandparents with such backgrounds (defined as either a degree in an engineering discipline or job experience working in a field like chemical engineering).

But you, and your son, had and will have a choice about their career, I assume. If it was a caste, then you'd be forced into it and have no choice whatsoever.
 

Daffy Duck

Banned
Interesting question

Interesting question!
I agree with the former posts..in order to have a modern caste society, you'd need a strong, aristocratic military class..sort of like ancient Rome and a deliberate suppression of modern education and research.

Modern science has proven that ALL humans are actually closely related (to about 60-80 thousand years ago) when our species experienced a genetic bottleneck. Once everyone starts understanding that, a lot of the racism and caste society in the world will go away..it all comes down to education and how we are raised at home.
 
Look at the number of individuals that follow their parent/s into the teaching profession. Also look at the attitudes amongst some in the West towards those involved in manual labor. Unless it is something like cabinetmaking or custome furniture it is looked at as something they would not let their dead dog do. yet as Judge Smeals (sp) said. "The world needs ditch diggers to." Caste like attitudes already exist.
 
Current castes

Isn't the world divided into good looking people and ugly people allready? Just make it formal.
 
But you, and your son, had and will have a choice about their career, I assume. If it was a caste, then you'd be forced into it and have no choice whatsoever.

If, say, a majority of engineers/soldiers/whatever have most of their ancestry having been the same, does it really matter much? Many even use the term caste to describe what they belong to---for instance a lot of Southerners in the US describe themselves as an American military caste.
 

OS fan

Banned
The western world would need centuries from now on to arrive at a similar state. Although it's possible.
 
How would you discourage/prevent emigration from caste communities and prevent the castes from mixing together in cosmopolitan trading centers as invariably happens?

Well I would imagine that you are looking at at mix of heavy handed regulation and social taboos. The former would be things like ID papers, travel permits, essentially a society where you need a mountain of paperwork if you want to do anything that involves interacting with other castes. The latter is going to spring from encouraging each of the higher castes to look down on its fellows. So the scientists regard the military as 'uniformed thugs', the military looks at the scientists as 'effete ivory tower intellectuals' and so on.
 
That's not really a caste, that's just coincidence.

A snowstorm two days after I make plans to bring my motorcycle out of storage, it's coincidence.

If there's effect springing from a cause, it's not a coincidence.

But you, and your son, had and will have a choice about their career, I assume. If it was a caste, then you'd be forced into it and have no choice whatsoever.

An effective caste system emerges from tradition, regardless of when or if laws are enacted to formally enshrine it.

Establishing an effective caste system would see social structures such that it would at least seem to be advantageous to follow one's heritage and subscribe to their caste's ideals. As an example, my maternal grandfather, an NCO-turned-officer, strongly pushed his son to go to the national military academy, as it was to his experience the best opportunity his son could have. If someone's viewpoint is framed like that growing up, perception of choices can trump what your choices actually are.
 
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