The inequality reader: Contemporary and foundational readings in race, class, and gender. Manza, Jeff. Inequality and society: Social science perspectives on social stratification. New York: W. A very good text for undergraduate courses on social inequality. Compared with other similar texts, provides far greater emphasis on the role political inequality. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. Not a member? Sign up for My OBO. Already a member? Publications Pages Publications Pages. Hence they are provided with different opportunities and high prestige. Training: Society makes elaborate arrangements for the training of younger generation.
Those who spend more time on training and acquiring new skills are compensated with high returns. Even though such persons start working later yet the economic returns and social prestige associated with their work is higher than others.
Work Efficiency: Persons with appropriate knowledge and training occupy appropriate positions. Hence, their work efficiency is also higher. Under this system there is no place for parasites and those who shirk work. The fittest to survive is the rule which is followed.
Development: The competition to move higher in the social ladder has resulted into new inventions, new methods of work and greater efficiency.
This system has led to progress and development of the country. The Western societies are highly developed; it is attributed to the fact that these societies adopted open system of stratification. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Single-parent households headed by women have especially high poverty rates. In explaining poverty, observers attribute it either to personal deficiencies of the poor themselves or instead to structural problems in American society such as racial discrimination and rundown schools that block the ability and opportunity of the poor to improve their lot.
Poverty has dire effects for the poor in many areas of life, including illness and health care, schooling, and housing. The nations of the world differ dramatically in wealth and other resources, with the poorest nations in Africa and parts of Asia. Modernization theory explains global stratification in terms of deficient cultures of the poorest nations, while dependency theory explains it in terms of colonialization and exploitation by the richest nations in Western Europe and North America.
The residents of the poorest nations live in miserable conditions and are at much greater risk than those of the richest nations for deadly diseases and other major problems.
Using Sociology It is Thanksgiving dinner, and your family and other relatives are gathered around a very large table. However, there are also patterns of inequality associated with the social positions people occupy.
So far as the natural inequality is concerned with reference to age, sex, height, weight etc. The term social inequality refers to the socially created inequalities. Stratification is a particular form of social inequality. It refers to the presence of social groups which are ranked one above the other in terms of the power, prestige and wealth their members possess.
Those who belong to a particular group or stratum will have some awareness of common interest and common identity. They will share a similar life-style which will distinguish them from the members of other social strata.
Hindu society in traditional India was divided into five main strata: four Varnas and fifth group, the out caste or untouchables. These strata are arranged in a hierarchy with the Brahmins at the top and untouchables at the bottom. Such inequality has been perceived by the earlier thinkers in different terms like economic, political, religious etc. Plato was one of the first to acknowledge that inequality is inevitable and to suggest ways in which the distribution of money, status and power could be altered for the betterment of both the individual and the society.
The society that Plato envisioned is explicitly meant to be class-structured, so that all citizens belong to one of three classes:. He eliminated inheritance of class status and provided equality of opportunities regardless of birth. Aristotle was clearly concerned with the consequences of inequality in birth, strength and wealth. Machiavelli asked who is fit to rule and what form of rule will produce order, happiness, prosperity and strength.
He saw tension between elite and the masses. He preferred democratic rule. About the selection for ruling positions he advocated inequality in situation is legitimate so long as there has been equality of opportunity to become unequal. Thomas Hobbes saw all men equally interested in acquiring power and privileges, which leads to chaotic conditions, unless there is a set of rules by which they agree to abide.
The sovereign can be removed if he fails to come up to the maintenance of equality for safety of all men. Weber emphasized the existence of three types of groups based on different forms of inequality and the fact that they may be independent of one another. Weber suggested three types of market situations i labour market, ii money market, and iii commodity market.
Weber termed the second from of inequality social honour or prestige and the third form of inequality for Weber was power. As exemplified by caste, social stratification involves a hierarchy of social groups. Members of a particular group have common identity, like interests, and similar life-style.
They enjoy or suffer from the unequal distribution of rewards in societies as members of different social groups. Social stratification, however is only one form of social inequality. It is possible for social inequality to exist without social strata. It is stated that a hierarchy of social groups has been replaced by a hierarchy of individuals. Although many sociologists use the term inequality and social stratification interchangeably, social stratification is seen as a specific form of social inequality.
Social stratification is an inherent character of all societies. It is historical as we find it in all societies, ancient and modern; and it is universal as it exists in simple or complex societies.
The social differentiation on the basis of high and low is the historical heritage of all societies. These social strata and layers, divisions and subdivisions have over the time been accepted on the basis of sex and age, status and role, qualification and inefficiency, life chances and economic cum political ascription and monopolization, ritual and ceremony and on numerous other basis. It is of varied nature. It is no less based on the considerations of superiority and inferiority, authority and subordination, profession and vocation.
Social stratification has remained despite the revolutionary ideas and radicalism, equality and democracy, socialism and communism.
Classless society is just an ideal. The stratification has something to do; it appears with the very mental makeup of man. The origin of the social stratification cannot be explained in terms of history. The existence or nonexistent of the stratification in early society cannot be pin pointed. The differentiation between classes existed as early as the Indus Valley society.
They, it appears, had the priestly and other classes. By stratification we mean that arrangement of any social group or society by which positions are hierarchically divided. The positions are unequal with regard to power, property, evaluation and psychic gratification. We add social, because positions consist of socially defined statuses. Stratification is a phenomenon present in all societies that have produced a surplus.
Stratification is the process by which members of society rank themselves and one another in hierarchies with respect to the amount of desirable goods they possess. The existence of stratification has led to the centuries old problem of social inequality. In societies that have closed stratification systems, such inequalities are institutionalised and rigid.
An individual born into a particular economic and social stratum or caste, remains in this stratum until he dies. Most modern industrial societies have open or class stratification systems. In open stratification systems, social mobility is possible, although some members of the population do not have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
The term stratification refers to a process by which individuals and groups are ranked in a more or less enduring hierarchy of status. It refers to the division of a population into strata, one on the top of another, on the basis of certain characteristics like inborn qualities, material possessions and performance.
According to Raymond W. As Malvin M. The consequence of layering process in a society is the creation of structural forms — social classes. Where society is composed of social classes, the social structure looks like a pyramid. At the bottom of the structure lies the lowest social class and above it other social classes arranged in a hierarchy. Thus, stratification involves two phenomena, 1 differentiation of individuals or groups where by some individuals or group come to rank higher than other and 2 the ranking of individuals according to some basis of valuation.
Viewed in this way it can be stated that every society is divided into more or less distinct groups.
There is no society known which does not make some distinction between individuals by ranking them on some scale of value. There has been no society in which every individual has the same rank and the same privileges. In simpler communities we may not find any class strata apart from the distinction between members of the groups and strangers, distinction based on age, sex kinship.
But in the primitive world chieftainship, individual prowess and clan or family property introduce an incipient stratification. However, modern stratification fundamentally differs from stratification in the primitive societies.
Among the primitive people class distinctions are rarely found. In the modern industrial age estates pass into social classes. Hereditary ranks are abolished but distinctions of status remain and there are great differences in economic power and social opportunities.
Every know society, past and present, thus differentiates its members in terms of roles they play in the group. These roles are determined by the formal positions or statuses in which a society places its members. Society compares and ranks individuals and groups on the basis of some differences in values it attaches to different roles. When individuals and groups are ranked according to some commonly accepted basis of valuation, in a hierarchy of status levels based j upon inequality of social position, we have social stratification.
Melvin M. Tumin has mentioned the following characteristics of social stratification:. Stratification is social in the sense that it does not represent inequality which are biologically based. It is true that factors such as strength, intelligence, age, sex can often serve as the basis on which status are distinguished. But such differences by themselves are not sufficient to explain why some statuses receive more power, property and prestige than others.
Biological traits do not determine social superiority and inferiority until they are socially recognised. For example, manager of an industry attains a dominant position not by physical strength, nor by his age, but by having socially defined traits. His education, training skills, experience, personality, character etc.
The stratification system is very old. Stratification was present even in the small wandering bands. Age and sex wear the main criteria of stratification. Difference between the rich and poor, powerful and humble, freemen and slaves was there in almost all the ancient civilisation. Ever since the time of Plato and Kautilya social philosopher have been deeply concerned with economic, social, political inequalities.
Social stratification is universal. Even in the non-literate societies stratification is very much present. Social stratification has never been uniform in all societies. The ancient Roman society was stratified into two strata: the Patricians and the Plebians. The Aryan society was divided into four Varnas: the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Sudras, the ancient Greek society in to freemen and slaves, the ancient Chinese society into mandarins, merchants, Farmer and soldiers.
Class and estate seem to be the general forms of stratification found in the modern world. The stratification system has its own consequences. The most important, most desired and often the scarcest things in human life are distributed unequally because of stratification. The system leads to two kind of consequences: i Life chances and ii Life style. Life chances refer to such things as infant mortality, longevity, physical and mental illness, marital conflict, separation and divorce.
Life styles include the mode of housing, residential area, education, means of recreation, relation between parent and children, modes of conveyance and so on. All stratification systems have some common elements. These elements have been identified as differentiation, ranking, evaluation and rewarding. Here Tumin has been referred to discuss the elements of social stratification.
Status differentiation is the process by which social positions are determined and distinguished from one another by way Of associating a distinctive role, a set of rights and responsibilities such as father and mother.
Responsibilities, resources and rights are assigned to status not to particular individuals. For only by doing so societies can establish general and uniform rules or norms that will apply to many and diverse individuals who are to occupy the same status e. Differentiation is not independent process in itself. The most important criteria for understanding the process of differentiation is ranking.
Ranking non- valuative i. Ranking is a selective process in the sense that only some statuses are selected for comparative ranking and of all criteria of ranking only some are actually used in ranking process e. Differentiation and ranking are further solidified by the evaluation process.
Whereas the ranking procedure pivots about the question of more of or less of, the evaluation process centres in the question better and worse. Evaluation is both a personal and societal attribute. That is, individuals assign a relative worth, a degree of preference and a priority of desirability to everything. To the extent that evaluation is a learned quality, a consensus tends to develop within a culture individuals tend to share a common set of values.
This value consensus is the societal dimension crucial to evaluation stratification. Which refers to honour and it involves the respectful behaviour. Radcliffe Brown says that among hunting societies three groups usually are accorded special prestige: the elderly, those with supernatural powers, those who have special personal attributes such as hunting skill.
0コメント