Social stratification

What is social stratification?

• Work in pairs and provide a definition
Stratification describes the way in which different
groups of people are placed within society

The status of people is often determined by how society is stratified - the basis of
which can include;

 Wealth and income - This is the most common basis of stratification

 Social class
 Ethnicity
 Gender
 Political status
 Religion (e.g. the caste system in India)
 The stratification of society is also based
upon either an open, or closed system.
• OPEN • Closed
Status is achieved through Status is ascribed, rather than
merit, and effort. This is achieved. Ascribed status can
sometimes known as a be based upon several
meritocracy. The UK is a factors, such as family
relatively open background (e.g. the feudal
society, although system consists of landowners
disadvantaged groups within and serfs). Political factors
society face a glass ceiling. may also play a role (e.g.
societies organised on the
basis of communism), as can
ethnicity (e.g. the former
apartheid regime in South
Africa) and religion.
 Structure of inequality
The power of the elite within society is based upon:

Income

Wealth

A network of social connections

The power of the elite within society is based
upon;
Income
Wealth
A network of social connections – sometimes
known as the ‘old boys network’
 Work in pairs and find the connection between these
words/phrases.

• poverty – least powerful – few opportunities

• neither rich nor poor – people – middle-class
• In contrast the least powerful within society have
few opportunities to escape from poverty. There
are different explanations for this. For example
the New Right sociologist Charles Murray argued
that the poorest members of society had become
too reliant upon welfare benefits. This had led to
a gradual loss in the ability of the poor to adopt
values that would take them out of poverty; such
as self-reliance and personal initiative. Most
people within society are neither rich nor poor.
They form part of the middle-class –which is the
most numerical social class within society.
Factors that determine
life chances
Social class

Gender

 Ethnicity,

Schooling
 Work in pairs and find the connection between these words/phrases.

Life chances exist

• glass ceiling
• work
• discrimination
REVISION
 Life chances exist
• For example ethnic minorities often face a
glass ceiling at work due to discrimination
upon racial grounds; which can be either overt
(or obvious), or covert (in other
words, hidden). Women also face the same
problem.
 “underclass”

• term associated with the work of John Rex

and Robert Moore. Members of the
underclass form norms and values that often
differ to the rest of society. They are caught in
a poverty trap (or cycle) from which they find
very difficult to escape from. This is despite
changes to the welfare and benefits system
designed to get welfare claimants into work.
 Social stratification
(sociology)
• classification of persons into groups based on
shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational
set of inequalities with economic, social, political
and ideological dimensions.
• It is a system by which society ranks categories of
people in a hierarchy .

(hierarchy/`haɪə.rɑ:ki/)
 Four basic principles
• Social stratification is based on four basic
principles:
1. Social stratification is a trait of society, not simply
a reflection of individual differences;
2. Social stratification carries over from generation
to generation;
3. Social stratification is universal but variable;
4. Social stratification involves not just inequality
but beliefs as well.
 Organization of Modern Western
societies
• In modern Western societies, stratification is
broadly organized into three main layers:
upper class,
middle class
lower class

Each of these classes can be further subdivided into smaller

classes e.g occupational
 Karl Marx
• The philosopher, social scientist, historian and
revolutionary, Karl Marx, is without a doubt
the most influential socialist thinker to emerge
in the Nineteenth Century. Although he was
largely ignored by scholars in his own
lifetime, his social, economic and political
ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist
movement after his death in 1883.
• He said: "The worker becomes all the poorer
the more wealth he produces, the more his
production increases in power and range. The
worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity
the more commodities he creates…"
Karl Marx
Compare these two quotes:

• ‘Teach a man how to fish and he eats for a

lifetime‘

• "Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a

man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful
business opportunity."
 Our resident language expert, Professor David Crystal, explains how Marx's influence
spread...

• This is a quotation about a quotation. In several cultures there are proverbs which
continue, after 'teach a man how to fish', with something like 'and he eats for a
lifetime'. Marx knows this, and he assumes we know it too. So he sets out to turn our
expectations upside down.
• The two part structure sets up the expectation: 'sell a man...' vs 'teach a man...'. And
because there is a contrast, we expect the two parts to be balanced. We expect the
bouncy rhythm of the first two clauses to be matched by a similarly bouncy rhythm in
the next two.
• But we don't get it. A clause of five syllables ('he eats for a day') is followed by one of
fourteen syllables: 'you ruin a wonderful business opportunity'. The extra weight of this
clause hammers the point home.
• It's a nice joke - but it's more than just a joke. The cliched business jargon adds an ironic
note to the whole utterance.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/movingwords/quotefeature/marx.shtml
• The capitalist mode of production consists of
two main economic parts:
the Substructure
the Superstructure.
• Classes -> people's relationship to the means
of productions in two basic ways:
 they own productive property
 labour for others
• The base comprehends the
 relations of production —
employer-employee work conditions,
 the technical division of labour , and property
relations — into which people enter to
produce the necessities and amenities of life
 Capitalism System
• the ruling classes own the means of
production, which essentially includes the
working class itself as they only have their
own labour power(´wage labour´) to offer in
order to survive.
• These relations fundamentally determine the
ideas and philosophies of a
society, constituting the superstructure.
 Max Weber
• Arguably the foremost social theorist of the twentieth century, Max Weber is also
known as a principal architect of modern social science along with Karl Marx and
Emil Durkheim. Weber's wide-ranging contributions gave critical impetus to the
birth of new academic disciplines such as sociology and public administration as
well as to the significant reorientation in law, economics, political science, and
religious studies.
• His methodological writings were instrumental in establishing the self-identity of
modern social science as a distinct field of inquiry; he is still claimed as the source
of inspiration by empirical positivists and their hermeneutic detractors alike. More
substantively, Weber's two most celebrated contributions were the “rationalization
thesis,” a grand meta-historical analysis of the dominance of the west in modern
times, and the “Protestant Ethic thesis,” a non-Marxist genealogy of modern
capitalism. Together, these two theses helped launch his reputation as one of the
founding theorists of modernity. In addition, his avid interest and participation in
politics led to a unique strand of political realism comparable to that of Machiavelli
and Hobbes. As such, Max Weber's influence was far-reaching across the vast array
of disciplinary, methodological, ideological and philosophical reflections that are
still our own and increasingly more so.
• Max Weber was strongly influenced by Marx's
ideas, but rejected the possibility of effective
communism, arguing that it would require an
even greater level of detrimental social
control and bureaucratization than capitalist
society.
• Weber criticized the dialectical presumption
of proletariat revolt, believing it to be unlikely.
Instead, he developed the three-component
theory of stratification and the concept of life
chances. Weber supposed there were more
class divisions than Marx suggested.
• He emphasized the difference between
class, status, and power, and treated these as
separate but related sources of power, each
with different effects on social action.
Four main classes (Working at half a century later than
Marx, Weber claimed there to be in fact four main classes )

• the upper class,

• the white collar workers,
• The petite bourgeoisie,
• and the manual working class.
 few general concepts
(work in pairs and analyse what each concept is about and after that share your information with your classmates )

• Power
• Domination
• Communal & Societal Action
 Power
• POWER -> ability of an actor (or actors) to realize his
or her will in a social action, even against the will of
other actors. Power relates to the ability to command
resources in a particular domain.
• Economic power, then, is the ability to control
material resources: to direct production, to
monopolize accumulation, to dictate consumption.
• Societal power includes economic power, social
power, legal or political power, and so forth. Although
the control of these domains of resources usually go
together, they represent different mechanisms of
power, and are conceptually distinct.
 Domination
• Domination is the exercise of authority .
• Possession of power in a sphere results in
dominance. Weber articulated three ideal
types of domination: charisma, tradition and
rational-legal.
 Communal & Societal Action
• A communal action is oriented on the basis of a
shared belief of affiliation. In other words, actors
believe that they somehow belong together in
some way. Their action stems from, and is co-
ordinated by this sentiment. In contrast, societal
action is oriented to a rational adjustment of
interests. The motivation is not a sense of shared
purpose, but rather, a recognition of shared
interests.

societal/sə´saɪətəl/
Work in groups and summarise the key concepts and
share your findings with the rest of the class .

• Class
• Status
• Party
 Class
• three aspects of class:
(i) a specific causal component of actors life
chances
(ii) which rests exclusively on economic
interests and wealth,
(iii) is represented under conditions of labour
and commodity markets.
• The possession of property defines the main
class difference, according to Weber
 Status
• status groups normally are communities
(class groups do not constitute
communities, according to Weber)
• Status is defined as the likelihood that life
chances are determined by social
honour, or, prestige. Status groups are linked
by a common style of life, and the attendant
social restrictions.
 Party
• Class and status interests interact in the realm
of the legal order, the arena of politics.
Political power is, obviously, often based on
class and status interests. Parties are the
organizations of power.