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UPSC SOCIOLOGY MAINS Syllabus – Paper 1 – Chapter 5 – Social stratification and mobility – Dimensions – Social stratification of class, status groups, gender, race and ethnicity.
- 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, education, and power.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF CLASS
- A class consists of a set of people who share similar status with regard to factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. Unlike caste systems, class systems are open.
- Bottomore differentiates four types of classes,i.e , upper class, middle class, working class and peasantry.
- Marx popularized the idea of class – bourgeoisie and proletariats.
- Goldthorpe in empirical study in England asserted that mobility is limited to only among the immediate classes.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF STATUS GROUPS
- While class is based on economic criteria, status is based on prestige, social capital and personal qualities.
- Status is both achieved as well as ascriptive.
- Status groups are generally more closed as compared to class groups.
- According to Weber, caste is the most developed form of status-based stratification.
- Pierre Bourdieu in his An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology 1992 also proposed that lifestyle choices rather than class are more important today.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF GENDER
- One of the most fundamental forms of stratification.
- Considered natural by functionalists like Mudrock and Parsons.
- But this natural role thesis has come under attack as the traditional patriarchal division of labour is being slowly turned on its head.
- Feminist scholars, such as Joan Acker, have criticized “traditional” stratification research, which has mostly ignored gender altogether
- The unequal access to resources, opportunities and rewards are legitimised by patriarchy and reinforced through its institutions.
- Marxist school of thought sees female subordination as a result of private property and consequent adoption of monogamy.
- Blackburn and Stewart explains that women going to work itself doesn’t ensure gender equality because women are often employed in part-time and low paid jobs. Occupational segregation reinforces stratification in society.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF RACE
- Race as a biological concept refer to a large category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics like color of skin, type of hair, facial features and size of head.
- Sociologists view race as merely an ideological construct based on physical differences.
- It was also used as a tool of domination, discrimination and spreading inequality in the form of racial stratification.
- Joseph Arthur De Gobineau in the middle of 19th century gave first major racial classification in terms of three distinct groups which were White (Caucasian), Black (Negroid) and Yellow (Mongolian).He also attached notions of superiority and inferiority with these races.
- Use of exclusionary methods like ghettos, intermarriage restrictions and social distance maintenance gives a practical shape to ethnocentrism.
- From conflict perspective, racial stratification is seen as a product of the capitalist system in which ruling class used slavery, colonization and racism as tools for exploiting labor.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF ETHNICITY
- While race is perceived as biological, ethnicity is purely cultural or social in its meaning.
- An ethnic group may have a common language, history, national origin or lifestyle.
- Balkanization of Europe is an example.
- Paul Brass (1991) discusses three ways of classifying ethnic groups: a) in terms of objective attributes, b) by reference to subjective feelings and c) in relation to behaviour.
- Writers like Glazer (1975) have contended that not only does ethnic feelings cease
to exist in a modern society, but is actually ‘revived’ and what is more is that increasing - Importance of ethnic identities or ethnicization can be attributed to the rising conditions of modenlization.
- Ethnicity is a search for an identity by a group and a demand that this identity be publicly acknowledged.
- However, it also has a practical aim for that group, namely, the demand for progress, for a rising standard of living, for a more effective political order and greater social justice.