Social Stratification
Social stratification
This domain examines structured inequality: how societies rank people, how strata are reproduced, and how class, status, gender, ethnicity and age intersect. Exam questions often ask you to compare explanations of inequality or assess mobility evidence.
Systems and concepts
- Stratification systems: slavery, caste (closed, ascribed), estate or feudal (legal orders), class (open, achieved, economic).
- Marx: class based on relationship to the means of production; bourgeoisie and proletariat; exploitation and class consciousness.
- Weber: class (market situation), status (social honour), party (power); a multidimensional model.
- Social mobility: vertical and horizontal, intergenerational and intragenerational; absolute versus relative mobility rates.
- Poverty: absolute (subsistence) versus relative (customary standards); deprivation and social exclusion; Townsend's relative deprivation indices.
Worked example
Question: why do functionalists and Marxists disagree about inequality? Reasoning: Davis and Moore argue stratification is necessary because important roles need scarce talent and rewards; Marxists reply that rewards reflect power and inheritance, not contribution, and that inequality limits mobility. Assess with evidence: if class origins strongly predict destinations, the functionalist merit claim is weakened. Conclude that the theories differ over whether inequality is functional necessity or structured exploitation, not over whether inequality exists.
Traps
Treating class and status as synonyms; defining poverty only as absolute; assuming high absolute mobility means a more open society when relative rates may be stable; ignoring gender and ethnicity in class analysis.
Key points
- Compare caste, estate and class systems.
- Marx focuses on production relations; Weber adds class, status and party.
- Distinguish absolute and relative poverty.
- Mobility can be absolute or relative.
- Inequality is multidimensional.