Abstract
The article relates two systems of interaction to each other: the organization of the ascriptive categories age and sex among the Nyakusa and a content analysis of relations in girls' and boys' books. In both cases a pattern has been noted, in which men have their own age and sex category as principal norm-sender, while women to a greater extent receive norms from three categories: the older generation and from each gender in their own age group.
Male and female conformity can thus be related to different norm-senders and to the prevalent rank-order of the norm-sending categories. The greater homogeneity and the higher rank of the male pattern of interaction provides a basis for a more universalistic value orientation and thereby a socialization into positions on higher levels of system in Parsons' structural hierarchy, whereas the particular weighing between inconsistent norm-sending categories ties the individal to the primary base level of social systems. The perspective of subordination is illustrated by the different sanctions that Nyakusa men and women have at their disposal and the consistent idea of different characteristics of men and women in youth literature.
The comparative description is based on an implicit assumption that the mutual category-conformity of men and women's isolation into private roles (privatisizing) contributes to the maintenance of the prevalent distribution of women and men on low and high levels of organization in terms of the structural hierarchy of Parsons.
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