Dominant group
The term "dominant group" refers to a privileged segment of society that wields significant power, resources, and influence compared to other social categories. This concept is often discussed in relation to "minority groups," which lack similar levels of power. Unlike majority group definitions based on population size, the dominant group's status is determined by its power dynamics, meaning it can exist as a small fraction of the population while still holding sway over societal resources. The distinction between dominant and superordinate groups is crucial, as power differs from authority; the former is the ability to enforce one’s will, while the latter aligns with accepted norms.
While societies may profess democratic ideals, they can still perpetuate inequalities that favor dominant groups, leading to a paradox where privileges are maintained without challenge. This situation raises questions about discrimination versus differential treatment, as dominant groups may engage in nonnormative practices that disadvantage minority groups. The study of "dominant group theory" investigates how these privileges impact various life aspects, including politics and education, and examines the communication patterns of both dominant and underrepresented groups. Understanding this framework helps to contextualize social disparities and the ongoing struggle for equity in diverse societies.
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Dominant group
“Dominant group,” along with its reciprocal concept of “minority group,” serves as a central orienting concept in the sociological study of racial and ethnic relations. These two structural concepts are so closely linked that “dominant group,” while appearing extensively in the literature, is rarely formally defined: More typically, it assumes its meaning in antithesis to the widely accepted and more formally specified notion of “minority group.” Accordingly, “dominant group” denotes a privileged social stratum that commands a disproportionate share of society’s resources, including wealth, prestige, and political influence.
Some persisting ambiguities and several implications attending the usage of the concept of “dominant group” must be noted. Fairly trivial is the technicality that dominant and minority groups, strictly speaking, are not “groups.” Because the members of either stratum do not all interact with one another on the basis of their respective designations, they are better regarded as societal “categories.” More seriously misleading can be the tendency to use the term “dominant group” interchangeably with “majority group.” What marks part of a population as a dominant group is not its relative number, but its relative power. Therefore, dominant group members may constitute only a small fraction of the society’s population and be substantially outnumbered by the relatively powerless constituents of a minority group.
Another misleading tendency equates the notion of dominant group with that of “superordinate group.” Here again, the notion of power—this time as distinct from authority—becomes vital. The German sociologist Max Weber defined “power” as the ability to realize one’s will against the resistance of others; power wielded in accord with established norms is legitimated and represents “authority.” Any society affords a distinction between superordinate and subordinate groups, based simply on an unequal distribution of valued resources. However, dominant and minority groups are a special case of such a disparity in which the inequality persists on nonnormative grounds. It applies only in societies that proclaim universal norms of status achievement yet selectively inhibit their realization. As the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal observed, such disjunctions between established principles and prevailing practices pose a dilemma for American society, one that marks the power (but hardly the authority) of one social stratum to maintain its privileges through nonnormative means while ascribing second-class citizenship to another.
This raises the seeming paradox that dominant (and minority) groups can exist only in societies that proclaim an essentially democratic ethos. However, in such a society, privileges (not rights) claimed by one group have yet to be effectively challenged, and rights denied another group still have not been redressed. This conceptualization also sharpens the distinction between discriminatory and merely differential treatment. Although in superordinate/subordinate situations, status disparities reflect legitimized differential and unequal treatment, in dominant/minority situations, such inequalities of treatment are deemed nonnormative and therefore discriminatory. A dominant/minority group situation may therefore be regarded as a transitional stage in an extended sociohistorical evolution from permanently ascribed statuses characteristic of caste systems toward a genuine class system of inequality where statuses are universally allocated by achievement criteria.
Dominant group theory (DGT) is the study of the ascribed privilege of the dominant group and its impact on all facets of life, including political, social, and educational settings. More specifically, it explains how a dominant group uses communication in terms of their privilege. It stems from the study of co-cultural theory, which oppositely examines the way underrepresented groups communicate within a society. The two theories exist simultaneously, as the dominant group is often assuming the privilege the co-cultural group is lacking.
Bibliography
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