What Is Valued In Society And How This Tells Us What Is Devalued

One way to understand who is at risk of devaluation is by looking at what a culture values positively, because it is the people who have the image of the opposite of what the society values positively who will almost certainly be cast into a devalued status in a society.

For  instance, in a society that values wealth and possessions, poverty will be devalued, and so will the poor who are the opposite of what is valued. A society that values activity and productivity will devalue idleness, and laziness, and perhaps even leisure, and therefore people are apt to be devalued who are lazy, long-term unemployed, or who play around a lot.

Carl Jung referred to a similar phenomenon as the ‘collective shadow’ of the society. For instance, he saw the pornography explosion in Victorian England as the shadow side of Victorian prudery.

Our Society Places High Value On:

Conversely Our Society Devalues:

Minority Groups Widely Devalued In Western Societies

Devalued Parties Also Participate In Social Devaluation

While it is largely the dominant sections of society that define its values, devalued people themselves participate in societal devaluations (prisoners versus sex offenders, mentally ill versus learning disabled, signers versus people with cochlea implants, working poor versus welfare poor).

Positive And Negative Values

Wolfensberger gives the following table of types of role, positive and negative, for various social categories.

The Process of Devaluation

Devaluation is the process that follows negative value being given to a group by another powerful group in society.  Devaluation occurs when groups of people are systematically treated poorly by society because of differences between them and people who are valued.  These differences can be PHYSICAL (facial disfigurement, lack of what society considers to be beauty, loss of limbs, skin colour, hair colour, looking old or looking young), FUNCTIONAL (behaviour, lack of intelligence, lack of moral sense, beliefs, skills) or SOCIAL (groups belonged to, failure to respond to others, being young, being old, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation).  Usually the group that suffers from devaluation is a relatively powerless minority.

Societal Devaluation

Note that it is not societal devaluation if only one person does the disliking of another person (just dislike), or if only one person dislikes a group (individual prejudice), or if the whole society dislikes one individual (scapegoating). For devaluation to occur, it must be most of society (or at least the powerful parts of it) disliking and acting negatively towards a group of people.

How Do We Decide What and Who Is Devalued?

A very good way of deciding what is devalued by society is to look at what is valued and then choose the opposite as the devalued object or person.  In western society a good way of finding out what is valued is to look at positive images from advertising. The opposite of these will, quite possibly, be the devalued objects or people.

Factors Which Influence the Likelihood or Severity of Devaluation

Devaluation may be more likely if:

·         The values of the dominant group are grossly transgressed by the behaviour, appearance, roles etc of the potential devalued group.

·         Many of the different values of the dominant group are transgressed.

Devaluation is less likely if:

·         There are religious (or other belief system) or economic reasons for limiting the severity of the devaluation.

·         The individual has compensatory qualities that help to ameliorate their devaluation.

·         The individual once held a high status role.

·         The likelihood of the person successfully removing themselves from the role at a later date.

·         The social connections of a potentially devalued person to other persons in high status groupings.

·         Social connections between potential devaluers and potential devaluees.

Who Gets Devalued?

People are more likely to be devalued if:

·         They can be given the status of ‘less than human’.

·         They can be seen as failing to reciprocate relationships.

·         They can be seen as acting persistently and strongly against the mores of that society.

·         They can be seen as a threat to the safety of others.

·         They can be seen as unduly burdensome on others.

Signs of Devaluation

·         Being in a group that is systematically  treated badly by society at large.

·         Being in a group that is systematically put at a distance from valued members of society.

·         Being in a group that is systematically placed in close proximity to other devalued groups.

·         Being in a group that is systematically given massive negative imagery.

·         Being in a group that is at high risk of being the subject of undue scientific and professional interest.

Why Do We Devalue People?

Many of the ways that we react have been inherited from our human ancestors, and even from our non-human ancestors. These include basic safety mechanisms- ‘avoid the different, desire what is like you’, ‘if someone has one threatening feature, look for others’. There is also a desire to identify yourself as individually valued or part of a valued group, and this is often achieved by defining who is not so valued.

How Can Devaluation Be Avoided?

Societies will probably always engage in devaluation. The only defences are either to change that society’s view of why they devalue particular groups, or to assist those devalued groups to gain more societal value.

Who Do I Not Value?

Looking at our own prejudices is useful. The problem is that our prejudices will seem normal and acceptable because we will tend to surround ourselves with friends and colleagues who share these prejudices. We also don’t tend to question these prejudices.

Some people will be devalued by most people in our society. For instance, criminals (especially paedophiles and drug dealers) and the severely mentally ill are devalued by most of society. We take it as normal that these people should be badly treated. It is expected that these people should have rights and good experiences taken from them. This is what prisons and (to a lesser extent) secure (and some non-secure) psychiatric units are for. It is unremarkable that these people should be routinely denied family life, alcohol, sexual relations, the right to vote and so on. When it is suggested that prisoners should have televisions in their cells or that secure psychiatric patients should be able to visit pleasant areas outside hospital, the press and probably the majority of people in this country become angry because they believe that doing bad things to people is correct and doing good things is questionable. This applies even if such things may help the person to avoid re-offending or to become ‘well’ again.

So we can see that most people (including ourselves) take part in this devaluation.

It is useful to compile a list of those people who we don’t value and to understand why we want bad things to happen to these people. If we then look at people who we don’t devalue, but who are devalued by others, then we can understand better how bad things happen to the mentally ill, ethnic minorities, children, older people, people with learning disability, refugees etc. Then we could consider how we may ourselves unconsciously not value these groups and take part in doing bad things to them.  We will do this later.

Historical And Cultural Prejudice

"These ‘Ocean Men’ are tall beasts with deep sunken eyes and beak-like noses...Although undoubtedly men, they seem to possess none of the social faculties of men. The most bestial of peasants is far more human... It is quite possible that they are susceptible to training, and could with patience be taught the modes of conduct proper to a human being." *

Summary of Value and Devaluation

Societies, often unconsciously, apply value judgements to objects and to people.  The question of value often indicates what the life outcome for individuals and groups will be in that society.

Society (or powerful groups in the society) may devalue all the people assigned to a particular group and then go on to treat them poorly because of their membership of that group.  At its extremes, this devaluation is life defining and life threatening.

Devaluation Exercises

Advertising and Devaluation

Your Personal Devaluation Agenda

* Jesuit priests described by a Confucian Scholar in the sixteenth century.