Social Stratification and Mobility: Caste, Class, Gender, Tribe and Social Mobility
This domain tests whether you can compare caste, class, gender and tribe as bases of stratification and explain mobility without collapsing one into another.
Stratification and mobility
Social stratification is ranked inequality in access to valued resources, with caste, class, gender and tribe as major bases. Caste is hereditary, endogamous and historically linked to purity-pollution and occupational ranking; varna is a textual fourfold model, jati the lived local group. Class is economically grounded and relatively open, though reproduction occurs through education and networks. Gender stratification refers to unequal power and resources by sex and gender norms, not mere biological difference. Tribe refers to communities with distinct kinship, territory and culture, often outside caste ranking. Social mobility is movement between positions: vertical/horizontal, intra-/intergenerational, and structural (caused by changing occupational structure).
Worked example
A Dalit student enters university through reservation and becomes a teacher. This is intergenerational upward mobility, but caste prejudice may persist in hiring and housing. Mobility in one domain does not erase stratification in another.
Traps
Caste and class are not identical: caste involves hereditary closure and ritual status; class involves economic position. Gender inequality is not 'natural'. Tribe is not a lower caste. Do not treat mobility as always individual; structural mobility matters. Avoid assuming that one upward move ends all inequality.