What Is The Three P's Of Social Class?

Max Weber said there are three components to social class power, prestige and property; also known as the three P’s of social class. Property (or wealth) can be seen as not only owning property, but controlling the property for their benefit. Power is the ability to control other people even if they resist the control. Lastly, prestige is the admiration of people to someone who has wealth and power (Henslin, 2014). The conflict perspective emphasizes that the creation of social classes with the dividing of resources. Not everyone agreed with the conflict perspective. Mosca’s argued that every society will be divided due to power. He even goes as far as to state this is inevitable because: society can’t exist without organization. There are
257). People in society have different chances in life, choosing a lifestyle, and how they look at their self. Property comes in many different forms but the bottom line is a person’s net worth. Income is the cash flowing in and out. Property is defined as owning land, stocks, bonds, and all assets in the county. C. Wright Mills defines power being able to have things your way despite resistance from others. Mills and others stated that a group of people who have the same views see themselves as “elite or superior”. Domhoff goes even farther to say that this group of people control the decisions of our government today. Prestige is the respect that one gets in society often due to occupation, education, and income. In many societies, including the United States, people want to display their prestige with status symbols such as brands of cars, clothing, or even the college attended. Social stratification is groups of people in a nation divided into layers according to power, property and prestige. This division of groups is universal, although some countries there are more inequality. One example for stratification would be by gender. A devastating example of social stratification is slavery, one person owns another. In some societies a caste system is used, where birth determines one’s social
For example, being born with dark skin is a race but being part of a certain religion with rituals is one’s ethnicity. Some groups have defined strict boundaries that separate them from other groups. An example would be parent choosing their children’s martial partners who have to be from the same ethnicity (arranged marriages). Doane, theorized that can have a heightened or low sense of ethnicity. A heightened sense of ethnicity tends to be a smaller group, who have less power, and look different in society. An example would be an Indian woman who wears a sari in the United States; she looks different and stands out. A group with a low sense of ethnicity has more power, are similar to the national identity and there is no discrimination. An example would be a Native American Indian who wears a feathered headdress for a ceremony but day to day dresses like most Americans. Ethnic work is the actions are when a person attempts to discover, enhance, continue, and learn about their ethnic or race