The Role of Social Structures

This chapter sets to do two main things: one analytical and the other theoretical. In the first instance, Guyana’s social structure would be isolated and assessed with regards to its role in the maintenance rather than transformation of ethnic differentiation and stratification. Secondly, based on a historical analysis of Guyana’s social structure, a tentative theoretical relationship between elements of the social structures and between relational structures and social institutions will be postulated. The theoretical point being made is that the relationship between elements of the social structures and between relational structures and social institutions is not a unidirectional, deterministic, causal relationship. On the contrary, there is a fair degree of feedback to the extent that a self-perpetuated social system is created. A strict deterministic, causal relationship between structures and institutions has already been effectively challenged to the extent that in sociology it is hardly likely to come across any work maintaining any strictly deterministic relationship between structures and institutions.