Session 9: Stratification

and Social Class

March 5, 2019
Social stratification
 Describes inequalities that exist between individuals in
society.
 Can relate to money but also to gender, age, religion,
race, etc.
 Stratification can be defined as ‘structured
inequalities between different groups of people.’
 Stratified systems share 3 things in common:
 Rankings apply to people who share a common
characteristic without necessarily interacting or
identifying with one another.
 People’s life experiences and opportunity depend to a
large extent on how their social category is ranked.
 The ranks of different categories tend to change very
slowly over time
The historical development
of stratification
 Little stratification existed in hunter/gatherer societies.
 The advent of agriculture increased wealth and so
increased stratification
 Industrialized societies now resemble a teardrop (rather
than a pyramid) with a large number of people in the
middle and lower middle class, a slightly smaller
number of people at the bottom and very few people at
the top.
 Giddens identifies four types of stratification: slavery,
caste, estates, and class.
 Slavery
 Extreme form of inequality in which certain people are owned as property
by others.
 Systems of slavery vary in terms of the levels of rights granted to slaves
 In the Southern US, slaves were deprived of all rights by law
 In other societies, slaves were more akin to servants (e.g. ancient Greece).
 Slaves have fought back against their subjection throughout history
 Slavery is not economically efficient because people have no incentives to
be productive.
 Slavery is illegal in most places but continues to exist in various parts of
the world.
 Does slavery exist in Pakistan?
Caste
 A caste system is a social system in which one’s position is given for
a lifetime.
 Social status if based on personal characteristics, such as perceived
race or ethnicity (often linked to skin colour or other physical
attributes)
 A person is born into a caste and remains there for her/his lifetime.
 They are typical of agricultural societies but have carried over into
industrial capitalist societies.
 Caste systems were historically found in all parts of the world (e.g.
Jews in Europe).
 In caste systems intimate contact between castes is discouraged in
order to maintain the ‘purity’ of the caste.
 Purity is often maintained through endogamy.
Caste in India
 According to Hinduism, there are four major castes:
 Brahmins (scholars and spritual leaders)
 Ksatriyas (soldiers and rulers)
 Vaisyas (farmers and merchants)
 Shudras (labourers and artisans)
 Dalits (‘untouchables’)
 Despite the fact that it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of
caste in 1949, discriminatory practices still exist.
 However, strict caste boundaries are becoming more difficult to maintain
because of urbanization and globalization.
 Does caste exist in Pakistan?
Estates
 Estates were part of European feudalism but also existed in other
traditional societies.
 Feudal estates consisted of strata with different obligations and rights
towards each other.
 The highest estate in Europe was the aristocracy or the gentry.
 The clergy formed another estate, having lower status but holding some
privileges.
 The ‘third estate’ was made up of the ‘commoners’ – serfs, peasants,
merchants and artisans.
 Not as rigid as the caste system.
 Estates formed a local rather than a national system of stratification.
 Does the estate system operate in Pakistan?
CLASS
 ‘A class is a large-scale grouping of people who share common economic
resources, which strongly influence the type of lifestyle they are able to
lead.’
 Class is determined by ownership of wealth and occupation.
 How is class different from other forms of stratification?
 Class systems are different from other forms of stratification because:
 Class systems are fluid.
 Class positions are to some extent achieved.
 Class is economically based
 Is caste giving way to class in Pakistan?
Marx and Weber on Class
 Marx saw class divisions as being based on who owned the means of
production.
 Weber highlighted other factors:
 Weber argued that people’s market position influenced their life chances.
 One’s qualifications make one more ‘marketable’ than others without the same
qualifications.
 Status, for Weber was based on one’s lifestyle.
 Weber argued that status often operated independently of economic class.
 Parties operate as a third form of stratification that is different from class and
status and is based on group affiliation.
Erik Olin Wright
 Wright argues that there are three dimensions of control over economic
resources:
 Control over investments or money capital.
 Control over the physical means of production.
 Control over labour power,
 The capitalist class control all of these dimensions while the working class
controls none.
 There are groups in between these two that are more ambiguous.
 Managers and white-collar workers hold contradictory class locations because
they can influence some aspects of production but not others.
What determines one’s class
position?
 Wright argues that it is one’s relationship to authority
helps determine one’s class position.
 Individuals with contradictory class locations are called
upon by capitalists to help control the working class.
 The possession of skills and expertise also contributes to
one’s class position.
 If one’s expertise is in short supply and high demand, then
thy are able to advance their class position.
Operationalising Class
 Most class schemes are based on occupational structure.
 This is done this because in general people in the same occupations will have
similar degrees of social advantage (or disadvantage), maintain comparable
lifestyles, and share similar opportunities.
 Some class schemes are largely descriptive, and do not address the
relations between classes.
 Scholars who see stratification as natural and unproblematic might present
such a scheme.
 Other schemes are more relational, drawing on Marx and Weber.
 Sociologists working within a ‘conflict’ paradigm prefer such schemes.
Goldthorpe on social class and
occupations

 Goldthorpe identified class based on two factors, market

situation and work situation.
 Market situation concerns her or his level of pay, job security,
and prospects for advancement.
 Work situation focuses on questions of control, power and
authority within an occupation.
 Goldthorpe divides people into three main classes and eight sub-
classes:
 Salariat
 Intermediate class
 Working class
 Is Goldthorpe’s scheme sufficient? Is anything left out? Can
it be applied to Pakistan?
 The death of class?
 Pakulski and Waters argue that class is no longer the key to understanding
contemporary societies in their book The Death of Class.
 Post-industrial societies have shifted from being organized around class to
being organized around status:
 ‘inequalities, although they remain, are the result of differences in status
(prestige) and in the lifestyle and consumption patterns favoured by such
status groups.’
 Privilege is marked by the ability to engage in ‘status consumption’.
 Stratification and inequality operates on a global rather than a national
scale.
 Giddens argues that class is not dead, it is just becoming more complex.
 What do you think?
 Reflecting on your own life experience, to what
extent has your identity been shaped by your
family’s social class background?
 
Class in the UK

 The Upper Class

 More than 75% of the 1,000 richest Britons have made
their own wealth.
 More women and minorities are entering ‘the rich’
 ‘Finance capitalists’ (people who run insurance
companies, banks, and investment funds) are the core
upper class today.
 The upper class is the top 1% and the service class is
about 25% of the population.
The Middle Class

 Comprised of a broad spectrum of people.

 Members of the middle class can sell their mental and
physical labour.
 Professional, managerial and administrative occupations
are amongst the fastest growing sectors of the middle
class.
 This can be attributed to the spread of bureaucracies.
The Working Class

 Contrary to Marx’s predictions, the working class has

become smaller and smaller.
 25 years ago, 40% of the population was in ‘blue-collar’
work. Now, in developed countries, this figure stands at
18%.
 The majority of the working class in developed countries do
not live in poverty.
 The embourgeoisement thesis states that blue collar
workers were becoming more like the middle class.
 Although the working class may be better off than it was
before, they are still not middle class in terms of their
lifestyles or their attitudes according to Goldthorpe’s study.
Underclass
 The segment of the population located at the very bottom of the class
structure
 Many are unemployed or are in and out of jobs.
 Some are homeless or have no permanent place to live.
 They may be dependent on the state welfare system.
 They are often described as being marginalized or excluded from the rest of
the population.
 They are often associated with members of ethnic or racial minority groups or
migrants.
 Marx called this group the ‘lumpenproletariat’.
 Social exclusion emphasises the processes that keep individuals marginalised.
 Race/ethnicity plays an important role in structuring the underclass of
European/N. American societies.
 Who makes up the underclass in Pakistan?
 Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
 Argued that lifestyle choices are an important indicator of class.
 He also identifies four types of capital:
 Economic capital: consists of material goods such as wealth, property
and income are important, but this can only give a partial
understanding of class.
 Cultural capital: education, appreciation of the arts, consumption
and leisure pursuits.
 Social capital: networks of friends and contacts. This is gained ‘by
virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized
relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.’ (1992)
 Symbolic capital: possession of a good reputation. Similar to status.
 All of these forms of capital are mutually reinforcing.
 Although we live in a consumer society where we are encouraged
to share tastes and consumption patterns, class differences can
also become intensified in such a society. How?
 Gender and class
 Can gender be subsumed within discussions of class? Are
women’s class positions necessarily the same as the men
in their families?
 Many criticisms have been made of class schemes that
assume that women can be included in the same class as
their husbands.
 Women often contribute significantly to the household
income.
 In some households, women and men are employed in
occupations that are not in the same ‘class’.
 Women are increasingly the sole breadwinners in their
families.
 Classifications are now generally made based on the
dominant breadwinner (rather than the male breadwinner)
Social mobility
 The movement of individuals between different socio-economic positions.
 We can study intragenerational mobility—how far up and down the scale one
moves in their own lifetime or
 We can study intergenerational mobility—how far children enter into the
same types of occupations as their parents or grandparents.
 Studies demonstrate that social mobility is possible in the UK, although it may
be difficult to achieve and limited in range.
 Most people remain close to the level of their families, although an increase in
white-collar jobs has made it possible for limited upward mobility for some.
 More women are also moving into higher-paid positions, although not in equal
numbers to men.
 The more unequal a society is, the less likely the prospects of social mobility
will be.
 How possible is social mobility in Pakistan?
The Distribution of Wealth
 In the UK, the top 1 percent own 21 % of the wealth
 The most wealthy 10% have owned more than 50% of the marketable
wealth in the country
 Half of the population owns less than 10% of the wealth.
 In the US the richest 1% account for 24% of all of the income.
 The richest 20% control 84% of the wealth
 The 400 richest Americans have a higher net worth than the bottom 50% of
the households!
 On a global scale, the richest 2 % if the global population own more than
half of the wealth. 
 The richest ten percent own 85% of the global wealth while the bottom
50% own less than 1%.
 According to the (Oxfam 2016) report, 62 billionaires
own the same amount of wealth as 3.5 billion people
who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.
In a dramatic widening of inequality, this number has
fallen from 388 in 2010, and is set to become just a
handful of super rich by 2020.
 The wealth held by the 62 richest people on the planet
is estimated at $1.76 trillion, a 44% increase from five
years ago. Meanwhile, the 3.5 billion poorest people
have seen their wealth shrink by over a trillion dollars,
or 41%, in the same period.
 This is despite the fact that the world’s population has
increased by 400m. To look at it another way, the
richest 1% now own half of the world’s wealth, and the
richest 50% own over 99% of the world’s wealth. The
poorest, less than 1%.
Growing Inequality

 While overall wealth may be increasing in countries,

there is also a growth in inequality in most countries of
the world.
 Why might this be problematic? (or is it?)
 http://www.globalpost.com/special-reports/global-
income-inequality-great-divide-globalpost
Who Rules America?

 What mechanisms exist for upper class reproduction in

the United States?
 What keeps people in and out?
 How is this process different for men and women?
 Is it possible to move into the upper class? What does
Domhoff conclude?
 Can you see parallels here in Pakistan? Explain.