Social Stratification
Social Stratification: Impacting Positions in Society
Social stratification is vertical hierarchical arrangement which differentiate people as superior or inferior. Societies are stratified in three ways which are,1) Social Class; 2) Racial and Ethnic stratification; and 3) Gender.
1) Social Class: According to Karl Marx, Class society is based around a primary line of division between two antagonistic classes, those who owns the means of production and those who do not own. Comer added to it in 1978 “Social Class implies having or not having the following: individual rights, privileges, power, rights over others, authority, life style choices, etc.”(Comer, 1978)
2) Racial and Ethnic Stratification: Hierarchy based upon race, religion, national origin, etc. Race is basically a distinguishing genetic characteristics resulting in physical characteristics. Whereas, ethnicity is a condition of being culturally rather than physically distinctive.
3) Gender: It generally deviates from biological distinction to sociological distinction in the form of masculine and feminine. One is born male or female but is stratified as man or woman later on.
Karl Marx in his work ‘Das Kapital’ volume – 3 had provided the general classification that after the primitive communist society all succeeding societies have been class societies. “The haves are dominant and have nots are subordinated. Thus, the class system necessarily involves inequality, exploitation and the potential for conflict” (Marx, 1894). Emile Durkheim along with Parsons and Merton have seen this stratification in different ways. They advocated structural functionalism and maintained that every organ of the society is important just like every part of body for the smooth functioning of society.
Hypothesis:
i. What role has class, race and gender played in individual’s life? How it get stratified? ii. Which sociological perspective gets associated with such stratification? What are the bases for particular
Social stratification is vertical hierarchical arrangement which differentiate people as superior or inferior. Societies are stratified in three ways which are,1) Social Class; 2) Racial and Ethnic stratification; and 3) Gender.
1) Social Class: According to Karl Marx, Class society is based around a primary line of division between two antagonistic classes, those who owns the means of production and those who do not own. Comer added to it in 1978 “Social Class implies having or not having the following: individual rights, privileges, power, rights over others, authority, life style choices, etc.”(Comer, 1978)
2) Racial and Ethnic Stratification: Hierarchy based upon race, religion, national origin, etc. Race is basically a distinguishing genetic characteristics resulting in physical characteristics. Whereas, ethnicity is a condition of being culturally rather than physically distinctive.
3) Gender: It generally deviates from biological distinction to sociological distinction in the form of masculine and feminine. One is born male or female but is stratified as man or woman later on.
Karl Marx in his work ‘Das Kapital’ volume – 3 had provided the general classification that after the primitive communist society all succeeding societies have been class societies. “The haves are dominant and have nots are subordinated. Thus, the class system necessarily involves inequality, exploitation and the potential for conflict” (Marx, 1894). Emile Durkheim along with Parsons and Merton have seen this stratification in different ways. They advocated structural functionalism and maintained that every organ of the society is important just like every part of body for the smooth functioning of society.
Hypothesis:
i. What role has class, race and gender played in individual’s life? How it get stratified? ii. Which sociological perspective gets associated with such stratification? What are the bases for particular
References: 1. Marx, Karl. Das Kapital, Vol.-3, 1894 2. Comer, 1978 3. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye, 1993 4. Bharti, Megha and Joshi, L.M., Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies, 2009 5. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex, 1949 6. Dahrendorf, Ralf. The Modern Social Conflict: The Politics of Liberty, Transactions Publishers, 2007.