• Social stratification is a significant field of study in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and psychology.
• The study of social stratification is compelling due to its connection to the ideal of equality.
• The term social stratification is borrowed from geology, referring to the division of people into layers or strata, arranged vertically like geological layers.
• The geological metaphor has limitations, as social strata are more complex and not visible to the naked eye, unlike geological strata.
• Social stratification refers to the division of society into hierarchical groupings, which can vary historically and culturally.
• The most familiar groupings include castes, estates, and classes, and from the 1960s, attention expanded to ethnic and gender stratification.
• While there is no unanimity, sociologists generally believe in the universality of social stratification, with varying bases of inequality across different societies and times.
• David Jary and Julia Jary state that inequalities can be based on various factors, such as income, wealth, power, prestige, age, ethnicity, and others, which are not mutually exclusive.
• In pre-industrial societies, religious and military strata often coexisted with those based on gender and ethnicity.
• Social differences become social stratification when people are ranked hierarchically based on dimensions of inequality.
• Power plays a crucial role in maintaining and reproducing social stratification, through the use of state apparatus or violence.
• The state apparatus enforces privileges and disabilities for superior and inferior strata, as seen in South Africa until recently.
• Violence may also uphold stratification outside the state framework, such as lynching of Blacks by Whites in the US or untouchables by caste Hindus in India.
• The use of violence to maintain stratification varies in extent depending on the society.
• Important features of social stratification:
  • It is a process by which individuals and groups are ranked in a hierarchy of status.
  • It involves an enduring hierarchy, where inequalities are institutionalized and legitimized by society.
  • Stratified societies are a universal phenomenon.
  • The bases of inequalities differ across societies.
  • Stratification is social in nature, excluding biologically caused inequalities.
  • Stratification exists in both simple and complex societies. In primitive societies, it was based on age, sex, and physical strength.
  • Members of different strata within each level of the hierarchy share similar life chances, lifestyles, and an awareness of their communal identity, which further distinguishes them.
  • Sociologists identify three major types of stratification: caste, estate, and class.
• The functional theory of stratification argues that positions in society have functional importance and require specialized skills.
• Adequate rewards (both monetary inducements and social prestige) are necessary to motivate individuals to develop the skills needed for these positions.

Class

• Class is a major form of social stratification, alongside estate and caste.
• In the early 19th century, the term class gradually replaced terms like estates, ranks, and orders to describe divisions within society.
• Zygmunt Bauman (1984) explains that the change in vocabulary reflected the decreasing significance of rank and inherited qualities, while the growing importance of possessions and income determined social position.
• Class refers to large categories of the population, defined by:
  1. Wealth and related social position.
  2. Their location in the production and distribution of social wealth.
  3. Distinctive interests, either opposing or complementing other groups’ interests.
  4. Tendency to display distinctive political, cultural, and social attitudes and behaviors.
• A class is a group of people with a definite status in society, which determines their relationship to other groups.
• Class status is determined by property, achievement, and the capacity of an individual.
• The major theoretical tradition of class analysis is based on the works of Karl Marx and Max Weber, particularly focusing on the class structure of industrial capitalism in the 19th century.
• Marx analyzed class in relation to the ownership of capital and the means of production.
• A class is formed by individuals playing the same role in the production process.
• Marx divided the population into those who owned property or the means of production (capitalist class) and those who did not (proletariat).
• Classes are tangible collectivities that can drive social change.
• Marx believed that the capitalist class’s endless drive for profit led to the exploitation of the proletariat, which would result in their pauperization.
• As a result, the workers would develop class consciousness and the proletariat would move from being a class in itself(an economically defined group with no self-awareness) to a class for itself (workers with class-consciousness, ready for class conflict).
• Marx distinguished classes in objective terms, based on their position in the productive system.
• Weber emphasized the market, distribution, and consumption rather than production.
• In Weber’s analysis, people with similar economic interests and economic power belong to the same class.
• Weber’s economic factor includes not only production relations but also market relations, which determine life chances.
• Capital was one source of market capacity, but skill and education also played a role in creating separate classes.
• Weber distinguished four classes:
  1. Propertied class (property owners and means of production).
  2. Intellectuals.
  3. Administrative and managerial class.
  4. Traditional petty bourgeois class (small businessmen and shopkeepers).
  5. Working class.
• Weber’s analysis of class was based on differential power, not economic exploitation.