Social Stratification

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Social Stratification

• What is Social Stratification?
• Caste and Class Systems
• Stratification
• Marx
• Weber
• Stratification and Technology A Global
  Perspective

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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.

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• 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 lifes 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 ones position in the
  social hierarchy.

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• 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.

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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 ones destiny, with little or no
  opportunity for social mobility based on effort.

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• 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.

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

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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.

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• 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 persons social standing across various
  dimensions of social inequality.

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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 todays
  white-collar workers do not think of themselves
  as an industrial proletariat.

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• 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.

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Max Weber Class, Status, and Power

• Weber saw Marxs two-class model simplistic.
• Instead, he thought social stratification
  involves three distinct dimensions of inequality.
• The first dimension is economic inequalitythe
  issue so vital to Marxwhich Weber called class
  position. Weber did not think of classes as
  crude categories but as a continuum ranging from
  high to low. Webers second dimension of social
  stratification is status, or social prestige, and
  the third is power.

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• Webers 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.

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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.

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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 groups survival depends on all
  sharing what they have. Thus, no categories of
  people emerge as better off than others.

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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 inequalityas great
  as any time in human historymeans that various
  categories of people lead strikingly different
  lives. Agrarian nobility typically exercises
  godlike power over the masses.

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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 mens domination over
  women.