The voice of the persecuted, of what was referred to as the "authentic" underclass, has often been rigidly defined and used to drown out dissenters.
Characters who are rigidly defined and unchanging keep human nature within bounds; a setting sparely described helps keep Nature under control.
A few films (think The Full Monty, or Trainspotting) managed to straddle these camps, but by and large the boundaries were rigidly defined.
This perspective fosters conflict and mistrust and, not surprisingly, relationships governed by relative power, tend to be transactional and are rigidly defined to protect each party's share of the value.
Still firmly in place, however, are rigidly defined tax frontiers that mean that people living just a few yards from one another can pay vastly different levels of tax, particularly if they happen to be wealthy.
Cell edges, they reason, do not have to be rigidly defined.
Novel actors and models for participation strain the humanitarian system precisely because humanitarian roles and responsibilities are rigidly defined, but not immutable.
In bad hierarchies, roles tend to be rigidly defined in terms of status (that is, 'higher' roles have more perks and are exempt from following the byzantine rules that hold for everyone else), but not very clearly defined in terms of who actually does what.
Acceptable apparel for scholar-officials was rigidly defined by social ranking system.
Diagnostic horizons, on the other hand, are rigidly defined and their presence or absence can be ascertained on the basis of unambiguous field and/or laboratory measurements.
