Standardized housing plans simultaneously codified visible social hierarchies among villagers

Evidence

Such a method of order offered the possibility of a remarkable standardisation, between houses, between families and between villages. As in the army, such uniformity would be a hallmark of the new order. But as with the invention of a system of military rank, the new methods of spatial order also worked by producing and codifying a visible hierarchy. The distinction was to be made, as was mentioned, between four different ranks of housing. Besides the model house for the ordinary peasant, there were dwellings for the well-to-do, for the rich, and for foreigners. The distribution of families according to these four categories would generate, or at least enfix and make certain, these distinctions among them, tending both to fix and make legible a determined social hierarchy. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 164

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the class hierarchy argument in the earlier ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article about sumptuary norms fixing social rank through visible markers.