Social Structure, Social Stratification and Social Mobility
Domain 5: Social Structure, Stratification and Social Mobility
This domain tests how societies arrange positions and rewards, and how people move between them. Expect questions on caste, class, estate and slavery, on Weber's dimensions, and on types of mobility.
Core rules
- Social structure is the patterned arrangement of statuses, roles, groups and institutions; it constrains action but does not abolish agency.
- Stratification is systematic inequality in access to valued resources - wealth, power, prestige. Historical forms include slavery, caste, estate and class. Caste is closed and ascribed; class is relatively open and achieved, though inheritance matters.
- Weber distinguished class (economic market situation), status (social honour) and party (power). Marx saw class as relations to the means of production and predicted polarisation; functionalists such as Davis and Moore argued stratification motivates scarce talent, a claim conflict theorists dispute.
- Mobility is movement between positions: vertical (up or down), horizontal (across similar positions), intergenerational (between generations) and intragenerational (within a career). Open societies permit more mobility; closed societies block it.
Worked example
A Dalit student becomes a government officer. This is intergenerational upward occupational mobility through education and reservation. It does not mean caste has vanished: her family may still face stigma in marriage and housing. Class mobility and caste mobility are related but not identical.
Traps
Do not say all inequality is stratification; stratification concerns ranked groups and durable rewards. Do not equate class with income alone. Do not claim mobility is only about income. Do not treat caste and class as interchangeable.