Sex and status in Scottish enlightenment social science: John Millar and the sociology of gender roles

John Millar's Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771) contains one of the first extensive and systematic discussions of the status of women in different societies. In this paper I attempt to show first that a combination of circumstances associated with the teaching of moral philosophy at Glasgow and with the reform of Scots law undertaken by Lord Kames made the status of women a critical problem for Millar. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that Millar drew heavily upon the resources of associationist psychology to explain how female status changed from hunting to pastoral to agricultural to commercial societies and that in doing so he diverged substantially from the perspectives developed by his mentor, Adam Smith. Finally, in view of Millar's extraordinarily positive reputation throughout Europe prior to the French Revolution and in view of the potential relevance of his analysis to early feminism and to mid-19th-century anthropological discussions of early matriarchy, I seek to account for why his work was virtually ignored from around 1802 to 1960.