Analysis of: “Barack Obama, Feminist in Chief?” in terms of A.R Radcliffe-Brown and Sherry Ortner

Cancerous cells may remain inactive for years until they trigger a tumor. While these cells are dormant, the organism functions properly and its health is not compromised. Yet, it is harboring a disease that runs on a countdown. On the first stages after the cells mutate and develop cancer, because the disease has not manifested itself to its fullest extent, the organism still appears to be healthy. Yet, it is now infected with a tumor that holds the capacity to grow, invade and spread throughout the entire organism debilitating it. In his essay “On the Concept of Function in Social Science”, Alfred Radcliff-Brown juxtaposes a society with a living organism. He asserts that as a living organism, a society is a structure composed of units that relate to one another and work together in order to maintain the continuous functioning of the whole (Radcliffe-Brown 395). As a living organism, a society too can bear a latent cancer cells that can detonate into a sickness that may seize it in its entirety.
Analyzing the American society under a medical scope anyone could diagnose apparent symptoms of illness. After eight long years of a republican presidency that included a terrorist attack, a short invasion of Afghanistan, a war on Iraq, and the beginning of an economic crisis, Americans were looking for a change that could improve the current situation. Yet, I must note that its current situation is that of an organism sitting out on the rain- its environment is conducing to disease yet, until the body stops functioning properly, it is not sick. Even when the American society is sitting out on a tempest, the units of the society are working together in order to change their circumstances. In the 2008 elections, either of the democratic choices presented a meaningful political change, thus it was precisely “CHANGE” that led Barack Obama to become the president elect. The idea of change was not only Obama’s campaign motto, or his personal image, it was an idea embedded in his list of future policies. Some issues addressed like warfare, healthcare, or the economic crisis seem to be the most relevant in order to reestablish an asymptomatic functioning of society. Even when these matters are not merely superficial, they are in fact symptoms of the surface. It is important that a society examines itself in depth, in order to discover cancer cells that maybe if not fully manifested now, could degenerate into a malignant tumor and rupture the social fabric.
Katha Pollit recognizes some of these cancerous cells that even if not fully manifested, are far from being dormant. On her article, “Barack Obama, Feminist in Chief?”, she points out how now, even a month before Obama’s inauguration day, feminist groups are already on the look out for issues where pressure might be applied. The American society is one of many societies that nests sexism. Sexual discrimination in United States does not reside on a level of ideology merely where men believe that they are superior to women; it is reflected on the outermost layer of actions. Gender prejudice in the workplace is one of the best examples of literal measures taken that disadvantage women: wages for women are lower, the physical appearance of women may influence the decision to hire them, amongst others. Pollit points out that merely taking some feminist positions “won’t seal the deal” for Obama; he should “make gender equality a keystone of his administration”. (Pollit 2008). Any change must be deep-rooted rather than symbolical in order to have a real effect on society. Naming women in important political positions or “rectifying outmoded [policies] that disadvantage women” are practical and temporary strategies, yet, a genuine change is needed in order to heal a wound that may soon infect the structure of society: the devaluation of women.
One cannot say that it is an American issue but rather a pan-cultural fact as Sherry Ortner calls it. In her article “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”, Sherry Ortner poses an interesting analogy that may serve to understand the reasons why women in different cultures and in different ways are devaluated. As the title exposes it, it is the apparent similitude between women and nature and men and culture that posits men on a higher social rank than women. Ortner defines culture as all that which surpasses and can modify nature, which could be seen as male duties such as food gathering, technology, and even art. Thus female duties are primitive and in their natural state such as birth giving and the socialization of children (Ortner 68). It has been the very much present and noticeable devaluation that created a movement such as feminism that led social revolutions in the 20th century. It has been that devaluation that at an opportunity like Barack Obama’s election, feminist groups try to forge awareness on a social issue of such relevance.
Certain diseases like cancer may be hidden, and it is only an early detection and proper treatment of the disease that can lead an organism to combat and vanquish it. If a society discovers its cancerous cells, relevant measures must be placed effective before it degenerates into sickness. To explain how a society could become ill, Radcliff-Brown turned to the Greeks who thought that when a particular unit of society broke the condition of harmonious functioning, the society would not perish, but would be “thrown into a condition of functional disunity”, referred to as dysnomia (Radcliffe-Brown 398). A good illustrative example of a dysnomic society consumed by illness is a country in a civil war: it cannot function while its constituent parts are not only divided but attacking each other. Yet a society does not have to declare a state of war in order to face peril. An issue like female devaluation which affects half of any given population from the jumpstart may evolve into a disease so powerful that it can very realistically affect the functioning, structure, and even existence of a society.
Female devaluation has been detected, now something must be done about it. Pollit has an accurate idea on how. On her article, she subtly differentiated herself from reactive feminists. Instead of attacking president elect Barack Obama for nominating “sexist theorizer Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council”; or asking his wife a “top-notch lawyer [to become] a stay home wife”; or articulating that he does not want a “girly dog” on the Barbara Walters Show (Pollit 2008); she encourages him to truly put on effect his ideas of change in matters of gender equality.
Radcliff-Brown contends that a structure is dependent on the “collection of its units” and yet not on the specificity of each one: the life cycle allows for cells as well as members of society to enter and leave the structure without it losing its shape (Radcliff-Brown 396). Yet, if a unit of society is granted the power to influence the functioning of the entire society maybe a key unit like the president of a country can in fact improve the functioning and structure of a society.
A president like Barack Obama who represents the idea of change in every sense of the word, is at the least the best opportunity the American society has to start curing female devaluation. Katha Pollit has some ideas on economic stimulus. Even if the problem lies further beneath economic equality, Sherry Ortner asserts that “the situation should be attacked from both sides”: social institutions should be changed in order to slowly repair cultural assumptions. Female devaluation is not a universal fact. Universality would imply that it is something that has always existed, that exists, and that will always exist; and that train of thinking is pessimistic enough to thwart change. Female devaluation should be seen as a cultural and historical flaw that must be repaired. It has been present on the years of our history yet it is treatable. More than hoping that president elect Barack Obama will take enough conscience and resolve the problem, every unit of the American society should contribute in partial activity to improve the total activity of its whole structure.


Bibliographical References
Ortner, Sherry. “Is Female to Nature as Male is to Culture”? Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, pp. 68-87.

Pollit, Katha. “Barack Obama, Feminist in Chief”? The Nation. December 3rd, 2008.
Radcliff-Brown, Alfred. “On the Concept of Function in Social Science”. American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 37. No.3. September 1935, pp.394-402.