Social Stratification
Social Stratification is the socioeconomic layering of society's members according to property, power, and prestige.
Property is all the wealth, investments, deeded and titled properties, and other tangible sources of income.
Power is the ability to get one's way even in the face of opposition to one's goals.
Prestige is the degree of social honor attached with your position in society.
As things go, those with lots of property tend to also have lots of power and social prestige.
Those with less property tend to have less power and prestige.
Of course, there are important exceptions to this social rule.
There are some jobs that might not lead to the accumulation of a lot of property, but the jobs hold a certain prestige in society. An example of this might be a priest.
There are other jobs that lead to the acquisition of a lot of property, but they don't necessarily lead to power. An example of this might be professional athlete.
In addition to social stratification, there are other sociological distinctions used to label and give meaning to social groups.
Social Differentiation is the distinction made between social groups and persons on the basis of biological, physiological, and sociocultural factors.
Social differentiation looks at basic human differences.
These can be biological (like different skin color, eye color, or physique) or cultural (like different jobs or power levels). Sociologists are interested in the meanings societies give these human differences, whether real or imagined.
Social inequality refers to the ways in which socially-defined categories of persons are differentially positioned with regard to access to a variety of social 'goods'
Ultimately, social stratification is connected to ideological beliefs about human difference:
Human differences become...
Social Differentiation when...
Ideological beliefs about differences are combined with
Power to then use those beliefs to create...
Social Inequalities.
This, in turn, always involves...
Social Stratification whereby different social groups are
ranked higher or lower on some form of equality scale.
Consider the construction of race:
Race is a human difference. It became a social differentiation when ideology (beliefs) determined that one race is superior to others. Ideology, combined with power lead to social inequalities, such as segregation and discrimination. These inequalities became social stratification, in which one group was deemed superior to another. The construction of race is still a social stratification society tries to correct.
This process creates a hierarchy.
Hierarchy is any system of persons or things ranked one above another
Hierarchies do not form for every human difference. For example, differences in eye color do not tend to lead to social stratification in which people with one eye color are deemed to be socially superior to others.
Social stratification is systematic, which means it did not just happen by chance. It is designed with a purpose. In this system, some people benefit and other suffer.
The following are four areas where we often see systematic social stratification:
- Social class
- Race
- Gender
- Age
Social statification leads to strata, or layers, of people. These layers are often referred to as social classes.
A social class is a segment of society whose members hold similar amounts of resources and share values, norms, and identifiable lifestyle. The number of social classes varies by society.
Technologically developed societies and countries have three broad classes: upper, middle, and lower. Those three are then subdivided into smaller categories.
In some developing coutries, there may be only two categories - an upper and a lower - and in still others there may be numerous categories.
