stratification and social class

module 5 . sociology

social stratification

refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings based on factors like wealth, income, education, family background, and power.

• factors that define stratification vary in different societies

• in most societies, stratification is an economic system, based on wealth and income

two types of systems of stratification

• closed systems

• opened systems

closed systems

accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels.

Closed systems include estate, slavery, and caste systems.

open systems

are based on achievement and allow for movement and interaction between layers and classes. How different systems operate reflect, emphasize, and foster specific cultural values, shaping individual beliefs.

Caste systems

are closed stratification systems where people can do little or nothing to change the social standing of their birth. The caste system determines all aspects of an individual’s life: occupations, marriage partners, and housing. Individual talents, interests, or potential do not provide opportunities to improve a person's social position.

Caste systems promote beliefs in fate, destiny, and the will of a higher power, rather than promoting individual freedom as a value. This belief system is an ideology. Every culture has an ideology that supports its system of stratification.

class system

based on both social factors and individual achievement

A class consists of a set of people who share similar status based on factors like wealth, income, education, family background, and occupation. Unlike caste systems, class systems are open. People may move to a different level (vertical movement) of education or employment status than their parents. Though family and other societal models help guide a person toward a career, personal choice and opportunity play a role.

exogamous marriage

They can also socialize with and marry members of other classes. People have the option to form an exogamous marriage, a union of spouses from different social categories.

Exogamous marriages often focus on values such as love and compatibility. Though social conformities still exist that encourage people to choose partners within their own class, called an endogamous marriage, people are not as pressured to choose marriage partners based solely on their social location.

Meritocracy

is a hypothetical system in which social stratification is determined by personal effort and merit. The concept of meritocracy is an ideal because no society has ever existed where social standing was based entirely on merit.

Rather, multiple factors influence social standing, including processes like socialization and the realities of inequality within economic systems. While a meritocracy has never existed, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place for evaluating and rewarding achievement in these areas.

status consistency

Sociologists use the term status consistency to describe the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual’s rank across the factors that determine social stratification within a lifetime

Caste systems correlate with high status consistency, due to the inability to move out of a class, whereas the more flexible class system demonstrates lower status consistency.

Wealth was passed from generation to generation through primogeniture, a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son.

class traits

Class traits, also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class. Class traits indicate the level of exposure a person has to a wide range of cultures. Class traits also indicate the amount of resources a person has to spend on items like hobbies, vacations, and leisure activities.

social mobility

refers to the ability of individuals to change positions within a social stratification system. When people improve or diminish their economic status in a way that affects social class, they experience social mobility. Individuals can experience upward or downward social mobility for a variety of reasons.

upward mobility

refers to an increase—or upward shift—when they move from a lower to a higher socioeconomical class.

downward mobility

when they move from higher socioeconomic class to a lower one

Some people move downward because of business setbacks, unemployment, or illness. Dropping out of school, losing a job, or getting a divorce may result in a loss of income or status and, therefore, downward social mobility.

Intergenerational mobility

It is not uncommon for different generations of a family to belong to varying social classes. This is known as intergenerational mobility.

For example, an upper-class executive may have parents who belonged to the middle class. In turn, those parents may have been raised in the lower class. Patterns of intergenerational mobility can reflect long-term societal changes.

it refers to changes in a person's social mobility over the course of their lifetime. For example, the wealth and prestige experienced by one person may be quite different from that of their siblings.

structural mobility

happens when societal changes enable a whole group of people to move up or down the social class ladder. Structural mobility is attributable to changes in society as a whole

Women who are single heads of household tend to have a lower income and lower standard of living than their married or single male counterparts. This is a worldwide phenomenon known as the “feminization of poverty”—which acknowledges that women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals in poverty across the globe and have a lower standard of living.

Absolute poverty

is an economic condition in which a family or individual cannot afford basic necessities, such as food and shelter, so that day-to-day survival is in jeopardy.

Relative poverty

is an economic condition in which a family or individuals have 50% income less than the average median income.

continue from 9.3