Social Stratification

H.Marks
 What is Social Stratification
Sociologists use the term social stratification to
describe the system of social standing. Social
Stratification refers to a society’s categorization
of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers
based on factors like wealth, income, race etc.
You may remember the word “stratification” from
geology class. The distinct vertical layers found in
rock, called stratification, are a good way to
visualize social structure. Society’s layers are
made of people, and society’s resources are
distributed unevenly throughout the layers.
The people who have more resources represent
the top layer of the social structure of
stratification. Other groups of people, with
progressively fewer and fewer resources,
represent the lower layers of our society.
How does Social Stratification take place?

Social Stratification can happen in two ways:

(1) People can be assigned to societal roles,
using as a basis for the assignment an
ascribed status which is an easily identifiable
characteristic such as gender, age, family
name or even skin colour over which they
have no control.
This is produce the caste and estate systems of
stratification; or (2) people’s positions in the
social hierarchy can be based to some degree on
achieved statuses gained through their individual,
direct efforts. This is known as the class system.
Stratification Systems
The Caste System

The Caste System is a rigid form of stratification,

based on ascribed characteristics such as skin
color or family identity, that determines a
person’s prestige, occupation, residence and
social relationships. Many people associations
caste systems with India; however, numerous
Other countries have a had caste-like systems
where minorities have been discriminated
against, denied civil rights, and ostracted.
Examples include the Burakumin in Japan,
the Al-Akhdam of Yemen, the Baekjeong of
Korea, the Dalit population in India and West
Indians in Great Britain.
Under a caste system, people are born into a
spend their entire lives within the caste with
little chance of leaving it. The caste is a
closed group whose members are severely
restricted in their choice of occupation and
degree of social participation.
Marriage outside the caste is prohibited.
Social Status is determined by the caste
of one’s birth, and it is very unusual for a
person to overcome his or her origins.
Contact between castes is minimal and governed
by a set rules or laws. If interaction must take
place, it is impersonal, and examples of the
participants’ superior or inferior status are
abundant. Access to valued resources is
extremely unequal. A set of religious beliefs often
justifies a caste system.
Hindus have never placidly accepted the
caste system. Since the nineteenth century,
economic developments have made the
caste system less stringent. In the 1930’s
Mohandas Gandhi tried to change attitudes
toward the untouchables, and untouchability
was declared illegal in 1949 (Caste, 2002)
The Estate system

The estate system is a closed system of stratification

in which person’s social position is defined by law,
and membership is determined primarily by
inheritance. An estate is a segment of a society that
has legally established rights and duties. The estate
system is similar to a caste system but not as
extreme. Some mobility is possible but by no means
as much as exists in a class system.
The estate’s system of medival Europe is a
good example of how this type of
stratification system works. The three major
estates in Europe during the Middle Ages
were the nobility, the clergy and at the
bottom of the hierarchy the peasants. A royal
landholding family at the top had authority
over a group of priests and the secular
nobility, who were quite powerful in their
own right.
The mobility were the warriors; they were
expected to give military protection to the
other two estates. The clergy not only
ministered to the spiritual needs of all the
people but also were often powerful
landowners as well. The peasants were
legally tied to the land, which they worked to
provide the nobles food and wealth.
In return, the nobles were suppose to provide
social order, not only with their military
strength but also as the legal authorities who
held court and acted as judges in disputes
concerning the peasants who belonged to
their land. The peasants had low social status,
little freedom or economic standing and
almost no power.
Just above the peasants was a small but growing
group, the merchants and craftspeople. They
operated somewhat outside the estate system in that,
although they might achieve great wealth and political
influence, they had little chance of moving into the
estate of nobility or warriors. It was this marginal
group which was less constricted by norms governing
behaviour of the estates, that had the flexibility to
gain power when the Industrial Revolution, starting in
the eighteenth century, undermined the estate.
Individuals were born into one of the estates and
remained there throughout their lives. Under
unusual circumstances, people could change their
estate. For example, when peasants, using
produce or livestock saved from their own
meager supply or a promise to turn over a bit of
land that by some rare fortune belonged to them
outright, could buy a position in the church for a
son or daughter.
For most, however, social mobility was
difficult and extremely limited because
wealth was permanently concentrated
among the landowners. The only solace for
the poor was the promise of a better life in
the hereafter (Vanfossen, 1979).
The Class System

A social class consist of a category of people who

share similar opportunities, similar economic and
vocational positions, similar lifestyles and similar
attitudes and behaviours.
A society that has several social classes and
permits social mobility is based on a class
system of stratification. Class boundaries are
maintained by limiting social interaction,
intermarriage and mobilty into another class.
Social mobility is greater in the a class system
than class system than in either a caste or an
estate system. This mobility is often the result of
an occupational structure that allows higher level
jobs to be available to anyone with the education
and experience required. A class society
encourages striving and achievement.
Upper Class

Members of the upper class have great

wealth, often going back for many
generations. They recognize one another, and
are recognized by others, by reputation and
lifestyle. They usually have a high prestige and
a lifestyle that excludes those of other classes.
Members of the class often influence
society’s basic economic and political
structures.
The upper class usually isolates itself from
the rest of society by residential segregation,
private clubs, and private schools
Middle Class

The middle class shares many characteristics with the

upper class but its members have not been able to
achieve the same kind of lifestyle because of economic
or educational shortcomings. Usually high school
graduates with modest incomes, they are semi
professionals, clerical and sales workers and upper
manual labourers
The people in this class emphasize
respectability and security, have some
savings and are politically and economically
conservative. They would often like to
improve their standard of living, jobs and
family incomes.
The lower Class

These are the people at the bottom of the economic

ladder. They have little in the way of economic or
occupational skills and consequently are unemployed
or underemployed. Lower class families often have
many problems including broken homes, illegitimacy,
criminal involvement and alcoholism.
Money, power and prestige are distributed unequally
among these classes. However, members of all the
classes share a desire to advance and achieve success
which makes them believe that the system is just and
that upward mobility is open to all. Therefore they tend
to blame themselves for lack of success and for
material need. Social Stratification contributes to social
inequality
Population Dynamics

Demography- is the study of the size and

composition of human populations as well as the
causes and consequences of changes in these
factors. Demography is influenced by three major
factors: fertility, mortality and migration.
Fertility

Fertility refers to the actual number of births in a

given population. For most countries, population
growth depends on the natural increase resulting
from more births than deaths. Most countries have
immigration or emigration, something that might
seem surprising to people in the United States, where
immigration is an important growth factor.
Fecundity is the physiological ability to have children.
Most women between the ages of 15 to 35 are capable
of bearing children. During this time, a woman
potentially could have up to 30 children; however, the
realistic maximum number of children a woman can
have is about 15. This number is a far cry from real life,
though where health, culture, and other factors limit
childbearing. Even in countries with high birth rates,
the average woman rarely has more than seven
children. (population reference bureau, 2008).
Whereas fecundity refers to the biological
potential to bear children, a common way of
measuring fertility is by using the crude birthrate,
which is the number of annual live births per
1,000 people in a given population. However
many demographers think a better way to
measure fertility is to use the total fertility rate,
which is the average number of children that
would be born to a woman over her lifespan.
Mortality

People die eventually, but in some countries they

die much earlier than others. Mortality is the
frequency of deaths in a population. The most
commonly used measure of this is the crude
death rate, which is the annual number of deaths
per 1000 in a given population.
Demographers also look at age specific death
rates,, for example, one measure used is the
infant morality rate, which measures the number
of children who die within the first year of life per
1,000 live births. Mortality is also reflected in
people’s life expectancy, the average number of
years a person born in a particular year can
expect to live.
Migration
Migration is the movement of populations from
one geographical area to another. We call it
emigration when a population leaves an area and
immigration when a population enters an area.

Further, there is internal migration for movement

with a nation’s boundary lines, in contrast to
immigration by which boundary lines are crossed.
Theories of Population

-Malthus’s Theory of Population Growth

-Marx’s Theory of Population Growth
-Demographic Transition Theory
Malthus Theory of Population

The core population problem, according to

Thomas Malthus, is that population will
always grow faster than available food supply
because resources increase arithmetically,
whereas population increases geometrically.
With a fixed amount of land, farm animals, fish
and other resources, agricultural production can
be increased only by cultivating new acres,
catching more fish and so on, an additive process
that Malthus believed would increase the food
supply in an arithmetic progression (1,2,3,4,5 and
so on. Population growth by contrast, increases in
geometric rate (1,2,4,8,16 and so on) as couples
have 3,4,5 and more children.
A stable population requires two individuals
to produce no more than 2-3 children, two to
reproduce themselves and 1 to make up for
those people who remain childless). Thus if
left unchecked, human populations are
destined to outgrow their food supplies and
suffer poverty and a never ending struggle
for existence
Malthus recognized the presence of certain forces
that limit population growth, grouping these into
two categories: preventative checks and positive
checks.

Preventative Checks are practices that would limit

reproduction. Preventative checks include
celibacy, the delay of marriage and such practices
as contraception within marriage, extramarital
sexual relations and prostitution
Positive checks are events that limit reproduction
either by causing deaths of individuals before
they reach reproduction age or by causing deaths
of large numbers of people, thereby lowering the
overall population. Positive checks include
famine, wars and epidemics.
Marx’s Theory of Population Growth

Karl Marx and other socialists rejected Malthus

view that population pressures and the related
miseries are inevitable. Marxists argue that the
sheer number of people in a population is not the
problem. Rather they contend, it is industrialism
and in part capitalism that creates the social and
economic problems associated with population
growth.
Industrialists need large populations to keep the
labour force adequate, available, flexible and
inexpensive. In addition, the capitalist system
requires constantly expanding markets which can
provide only by ever increasing population. As the
population grows, large numbers of unemployed
and underemployed people compete for the few
available jobs, which they are willing to take at
lower and lower wages.
Therefore according to Marxists, the norms
and values of a society that encourage
population growth are rooted in economic
and political systems.
Demographic Transition Theory

According to demographic transition theory, societies

pass through four stages of population change as they
move from high fertility and mortality to relatively low
fertility and mortality. This theory accurately describes
the population changes that have occurred in Western
society with the advance of industrialism: it does not,
however, explain population trends in the
underdeveloped world today.
References

Henry L. T (2014): Introduction to Sociology