Social Stratification

What is Social Stratification?Caste and Class Systems

StratificationMarxWeber

Stratification and Technology: A Global Perspective

What is Social Stratification?

• For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in small hunting and gathering societies. These bands of people show little signs of inequality. As societies became more complex, major changes came about, these changes elevated certain categories of the population by giving them more power, money, and prestige.

• Social Stratification- a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy.

• 1. Social stratification is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences.

• Children born into wealthy families are more likely than children born in poverty to experience good healthy, achieve academically, succeed in life’s work and live a long life.

• 2. Social stratification persists over generations.

• To see stratification as a trait of society rather than one of individuals, we need to only look at how inequality persists along generations. In all societies, parents pass their social position on to their children.

• Social Mobility- change in one’s position in the social hierarchy.

• 3. Social stratification is universal but variable.

• In some societies, inequality is mostly a matter of prestige; in others, wealth or power is the key dimension of difference. More importantly some societies display more inequality than others.

• 4. Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs.

• Any system of inequality gives some people more than others and the society also defines the arrangements as fair.

Caste and Class Systems

• A Caste System- is a social system based on ascription, or birth.

• A pure caste system is closed because birth alone determines one’s destiny, with little or no opportunity for social mobility based on effort.

• First, traditional caste groups have specific occupations, so generations of a family perform the same type of work.

• Second, maintaining a rigid social hierarchy depends on people marrying within their own categories; “mixed” marriages would blur the ranking of children.

• Endogamy- marriage between people of the same social category.

• Third, caste norms guide people to stay in the company of “their own kind.”

• Fourth, caste systems rest on powerful cultural beliefs.

• Caste systems exist in agrarian societies because life long routines of agriculture depend on a rigid sense of duty and discipline.

The Class System• Class System- social stratification based on both birth and

individual achievement.

• The class system categorizes people according to their color, sex, or social background comes to be seen as wrong in industrial and post-industrial societies, and all people gain political rights and roughly equal standing before the law.

• Meritocracy- social stratification based on personal merit.

• People in industrial societies develop a broad range of capabilities, stratification is based on “merit,” which is the job one does and how well one does it.

• Why do industrial and postindustrial societies keep castelike qualities?

• Because a pure meritocracy diminishes the importance of families and other social groupings. Economic performance is not everything after all. Would we want to evaluate our family members solely on their jobs? Probably not. Therefore, class systems in high-income nations move toward meritocracy to promote productivity and efficiency but retain caste elements to maintain order and social cohesion.

• Status consistency- the degree of consistency in a person’s social standing across various dimensions of social inequality.

The Functions of Social Stratification

• The structural-functional paradigm- social inequality plays a vital part in the operation of society.

• Davis-Moore thesis- Social stratification has beneficial consequences of the operation of a society.

• According to the Davis-Moore thesis, the greater the functional importance of a position, the more rewards a society attaches to it. This strategy promotes productivity and efficiency because rewarding important work with income, prestige, power, and leisure encourages people to do these jobs and to work better longer and harder. Unequal rewards benefit some individuals, then, and a system of unequal rewards benefits society as a whole.

Stratification and Conflict

• Social-Conflict analysis argues that rather than benefiting society as a whole, social stratification provides some people with advantages over others. This analysis draws heavily on the ideas of Karl Marx, with contributions from Max Weber.

• Marx saw great inequality in wealth and power arising from capitalism, which, he argued, made class conflict inevitable. In time, he believed, oppression and misery would drive the working majority to organize and ultimately overthrow capitalism.

• Marx explained the through the family, opportunity and wealth are passed down from generation to generation. Moreover, the legal system defends private property and inheritance. Finally, elite children mix at exclusive schools, forging social ties that will benefit them throughout their lives. Capitalist society reproduces the class structure in each new generation.

Why No Marxist Revolution?• 1. The fragmentation of the capitalist class.• Day-to-day operations of large corporations are now in the

hands of a managerial class, whose members may or may not be major stockholders.

• 2. A higher standard of living.

• A century ago most workers were in factories or on farms performing blue-collar occupations, lower-prestige work that involves mostly manual labor. Today, most workers hold white-collar occupations, higher-prestige work that involves mostly mental activity. Most of today’s white-collar workers do not think of themselves as an “industrial proletariat.”

• 3. More worker organizations.

• Workers today have organizational clout that they lacked a century ago. Worker management disputes are settled without threatening the capitalist system.

• 4. More extensive legal protections.

• During the twentieth century, the government passed laws to make the workplace safer and developed programs such as unemployment insurance, disability protection and Social Security.

Max Weber: Class, Status, and Power• Weber saw Marx’s two-class model simplistic.• Instead, he thought social stratification involves three

distinct dimensions of inequality.• The first dimension is economic inequality—the issue

so vital to Marx—which Weber called class position. Weber did not think of “classes” as crude categories but as a continuum ranging from high to low. Weber’s second dimension of social stratification is status, or social prestige, and the third is power.

• Weber’s view of social stratification in industrial societies as a multidimensional ranking rather than a hierarchy of clearly defined classes.

• Socioeconomic status (SES)-a composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality.

• Social stratification according to Weber is variable and complex.

Inequalities in History:

• Weber points out that each of his three dimensions of social inequality stands out at different points in the evolution of human societies. Agrarian societies emphasize status or social prestige, typically in the form of honor.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

• With simple technology, hunters and gathers produce only what is necessary for day-to-day living. Some people may produce more than others, but the group’s survival depends on all sharing what they have. Thus, no categories of people emerge as better off than others.

Horticultural, Pastoral, and Agrarian Societies

• As technology advances create a surplus, social inequality increases. In horticultural and pastoral societies, a small elite controls most of the surplus. Large-scale agriculture is more productive still, and marked inequality—as great as any time in human history—means that various categories of people lead strikingly different lives. Agrarian nobility typically exercises godlike power over the masses.

Industrial Societies

• Industrialization turns the tide, lessening inequality. Prompted by the need to develop individual talents, meritocracy takes hold and erodes the power of traditional elites.

• The specialized work performed in industrial societies demands schooling for all, sharply reducing illiteracy. A literate population, in turn, presses for a greater voice in political decision making, further diminishing social inequality and lessening men’s domination over women.