Social Stratification

This term refers to the classification or categorization of people into groups, with specific
commonalities. Such groupings may include: economic status, prestige, culture, race, religion,
age, gender or any other characteristic.
Social Stratification exists in every known human society. This classification system may be
informed by the values of the society. Particularistic values, tend to create closed stratification
systems. Whilst universal values create a more transient or open stratification system.

Social Mobility is the change in the social status of an individual. The term social , relates to any
aspect of life affected by peer to peer relations and interactions. Mobility is indicative of
movement. Thus the concept of social mobility addresses the issue of movement of an individual
within the social stratification system.
In the Caribbean social stratification is unique, since individual members may hold multiple
stations within the same social strata. What does this mean? Let take for example a young
professional Afro-Caribbean woman. Most Caribbean territories are characterized by
stratification structure that is rooted in a synthesized universalistic and particularistic value
system.

Under the universalistic/meritocratic value system, this individual's rank may be different to her
ranking under the particularistic/traditional value system. Further, the individual's placement in
both instances can be mutually exclusive.

Social Stratification
Functionalists would consider the following issues in theorizing about the phenomenon of social
stratification:
1. What is the function of social stratification?
* To maintain social order
* To ensure that all roles are filled
* Roles are filled by those best suited to efficiently execute them.

2. What are the functions of a class system?

* To classify and rank roles according to merit and importance
* To encourage individuals to invest time and effort in education, and skills acquisition for the
functionally more important roles.

3. Why is social stratification necessary?

- To ensure that society continues to exist.

Altogether, Davis and Moore contend that: Social inequality is an unconsciously evolved device
by which societies insure that the most important positions are filled by the most qualified
persons. Hence every society, no matter how simple or complex, must differentiate persons in
terms of both prestige and esteem, and must therefore possess a certain amount of
institutionalized inequality. (Mc-Graw-Hill, 1980)

Criticisms:
1. Anthropologists contend that social stratification or institutionalized inequality is not
necessarily inevitable, nor universal. Instead they suggest that some hunting /gathering societies
do not appear to have structured inequality.
2. Tumin presents the following arguments in opposition to Davis and Moore’s postulations:
• Academics have difficulty in defining positions as more or less important.
• There are several essential/functionally important jobs that are not prestigious.
• Any form of social inequality, has the tendency to discriminate against persons in lower ranks
of the strata.
• Individuals in lower stratas have fewer opportunities in comparison to those from higher
stratas to realize/develop their talents.
• Some members of the upper strata may be so positioned simply by virtue of birth/ascription
and not necessarily due to merit.

Caribbean Stratification
Overview
The Caribbean stratification system has been influenced by its history of Colonialism, Plantation
Slavery and Indentureship. Although, most of these territories are currently politically
independent nation-states, the legacy of their history have continued to impact upon their
individual social structure.

Caribbean Theories of Stratification

Plantation Society –
This theory of Caribbean society, though based on the original plantation model of, can be
applied to contemporary Caribbean societies.
• Upper Class/caste/ruling elites (traditionally white) – own wealth, means of production and
political power
• Intermediate Class/caste (mulatto/browns) – usually educated, own some wealth, (desire but)
lack political power
• Working Class/caste (blacks) – slaves, uneducated, lack wealth and political power.
Academics contend that the Upper Class on the contemporary Caribbean continues to be whites.
These either descents of the old planter class aristocracy (eg. The Blacks of Martinique –descents
of French planters – own most of the islands supermarkets, hotels, land, transportation, control
import prices,) continue to own and control a significant proportion of the territory’s wealth, and
as such wield great economic, social and political power. The non-white populations continue to
be situated at the lower end of the social strata. They constitute the public servants and unskilled
workers in the society.
Plural Society
• Smith argues that most societies in the Caribbean are plural societies where there exists
significant cultural diversity and race antagonism
• Various ethnic groups have their own socio-economic institutions but not their own political
system.
• It is the cultural and race diversity that causes the discord between the cultural groups.
• Social inequality exists between ethnic groups. These inequalities are transient depending on
the social actor. Factors of colour, religion, culture, economic background, education all
influence positioning within the social strata.

Creole Society
• Is described as a hybrid/syncretic/new society.
• The stratification system is informed by an inscriptive-particularistic value system
(Braithwaite)
• Ryan contends however that the inscriptive-particularistic value system that informed the pre-
independence era, gave way to meritocracy in the post-independence era. Some elements of the
inscriptive value system continue to exist.
Closed/quasi caste strata’s ----------- Flexible/Open class based strata
Colonialism ------------------------- Self-Governance

Plural Society
Many of the societies which have problems of multicultural governance are former multi-ethnic
colonies. A theory of such colonial and post-colonial societies draws particularly on the work of
J.S. Furnivall and M.G. Smith. According to Furnivall different ethnic groups in a plural society
meet only in the market place. This market place however lacks the characteristics which
Durkheim envisaged in his concept of organic solidarity. It lacks the shared values which organic
solidarity requires and involves brutal conflict and exploitation. The sense of solidarity on which
morality depends is to be found within the different ethnic groups when they go home from the
market place. Within these groups there is intense solidarity and moral unity.
Furnivall worked in Burma but wrote about Java drawing on the work of the Dutch economic
theorist, Boeke.
Boeke writes that in the economy of Netherlands India “there is a materialism, rationalism and
individualism and a concentration on economic ends far more complete and absolute than in
homogeneous Western lands” As he sees it this is a capitalism quite different from that which
grew slowly over hundreds of years and maintained its moral roots. M.G. Smith wrote originally
about Grenada but his theory of the plural society has been widely used in the analysis of
colonial and post-colonial societies in the Caribbean. Smith is aware of the general sociological
theory of Talcott Parsons and its assumption of four mutually supportive institutions. In the
Caribbean, however he argues that there are several co-existing ethnic groups each of which has
a nearly complete set of social institutions. Setting his argument within the context of a review of
social anthropological theories used in studying the Caribbean, he sees the various ethnic groups
as having their own family systems, their own productive economies, their own languages and
religion but not their own political system. In the political sphere they are all controlled by one
dominant segment... To put this in more concrete terms Blacks are descended from Slaves,
Indians from indentured labourers. The groups have remained distinct and have their own
institutions. They exist however politically under the domination of an outside power. Thus the
defining feature of a plural society is seen as this process of the domination of all ethnic groups
by the colonial power. New problems arise when the colonial power withdraws.
Whereas Furnivall sees the different ethnic groups as bound together by the economic fact of the
market place, Smith sees them as bound together by a political institution, the colonial state.
One crucial institution in the Caribbean was the slave plantation. The history of plantations is
traced by Max Weber in his General Economic History to the manor. But the Caribbean slave
plantation comes into existence when capitalism directs horticultural production to the market.
Similar developments occur in mining. M.G Smith’s theory has to take account of this. In fact he
sees the plantation as one form of political institution.
M.G.Smith collaborated with the South African, Leo Kuper in producing a series of essays on
Africa and also turned his attention to the United States in his book Corporations and Society,
The case of South Africa is of special interest calling for an analysis of a society based upon
rural labour migrating to the gold mines. The United States has developed as neither
homogeneous nor plural but heterogeneous.

Smith has to deal with the question of social class. This is easy enough for he has only to say that
each group has its own internal class structure. He does, however, have to compare his own
theory to that of Marx. He cannot accept that group formation occurs between those having the
same or different relations to the means of production, nor that “in the social production of the
means of life men enter into circumstances which are independent of their will” For Smith the
culture of ethnic groups in a plural society is not simply determined in this way. The plural
segments in colonial society operate according to a different dynamic which it is the purpose of
Plural Society theory to explain.

Rex has attempted to set out a theory of the plural society which does justice to Marxian and
other theories as well as those of Smith. This involves first of all recognizing that such societies
go though several phases of development, pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial. In the colonial
phase relations to the means of production are important, even though they are more varied than
Marxist categories suggest involving such structures as the encomienda in Spanish America. At
the same time however groups have a relationship to each other reminiscent of the mediaeval
estate system in Europe different groups having the cultures, rights and privileges which attach
to their function. In the post-colonial phase there would be according to this theory a number of
developments. One would be the subordination of peasants to the large estates or latitudinal, a
second would be the replacement of the former colonial power by a group able to take over its
powers, a third would be a change in which new primarily economic centres replaced the
colonial power, and so far as resistance and struggle within the new system is concerned
Fanonism laying emphasis upon the national struggle would take precedence over class struggle.
The application of plural society theory to capitalist societies based upon mining produces a
different set of problems. There rural agricultural reserves are expected to provide social back-up
so that males of working age can live in segregated compounds or locations and be intensively
exploited. This is a situation very much like that described by Furnivall.

References.
Boeke J, .H. “De Economische Theorie der Dualistiche Saamleving” quoted by Furnivall Op.cit
p452.

Durkheim, E., (1933), The Division of Labour in Society, Free Press, Glencoe Illinois

Furnivall, J. S., (1939) Netherlands India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

Rex, J., (1981), “A Working Paradigm for Race Relations Research” Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Vol 4 No 1 pp1-25

Smith, M, G., (1965), The Plural Society in the British West Indies, University of California
Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Smith, M.G., (1964), Corporations and Society, Duckworth, London,

Smith, M., G., and Kuper, L., (1969), Pluralism in Africa, University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Weber, M., (1961) General Economic History, Collier Books, New York.