SOC 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Mao Zedong, Simpletech, World Economy
Chapter 8
What is Social Stratification?
• Every society is marked by inequality
• Social stratification: a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy
• 4 factors:
o Social stratification is a trait of society not necessarily individual differences
▪ Children born into wealthy families more likely to do better
o Social stratification carries over from generation to generation
▪ Parents pass their social positions on to their children
▪ Social mobility: a change in position within the social hierarchy
• May be upward or downward
• We celebrate upward mobility
• Some move downward because of failures or unemployment
• More often movement is horizontal
o Switching jobs within the same status
o Social stratification is universal but variable
▪ Prestige vs. wealth vs. power
o Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs as well
▪ Defines arrangements as fair though they are not
▪ Sociologists define societies as closed or open
▪ Closed systems: systems that have limited mobility
• Caste systems
▪ Open systems: systems that allow social mobility
• Class systems
Caste System
• Social stratification based on ascription or birth
o Birth alone defines their social status
• Many of the worlds agrarian societies are caste systems
o Traditional Indian system is one of these
o 4 major castes
▪ Composed of hundreds of sub-caste groups
o Families in each caste perform one type of work
o Demands that people marry others of the same ranking
▪ Endogomas marriage
▪ Now a rare practice
o Caste guides everyday life by keeping people in the company of their own kind
▪ A purer person is polluted by contact with someone from lower standing
o Built on morality
o Caste systems are typical of agrarian societies
▪ Ensures discipline
o Formally outlawed in India but remains
Class System
• Process of schooling and specialization gives way to a class system
o Social stratification based on birth and achievement
• Class distinctions become blurred
o Blood relatives may have different standings
• In principle all have rights and equal standing in the law
• Greater individuality in work and marriage
• Meritocracy:
o Refers to social stratification based on personal merit
▪ Persons knowledge, ability, and effort
o Industrial societies expand opportunity and base rewards on individual
performance
o Pure meritocracy has never existed
o Would have ongoing social mobility
o Caste societies define merit by emphasizing loyalty to the system
▪ Waste human potential
▪ Stable and orderly
o Such extreme social mobility would pull apart relationships
o Even industrial and postindustrial societies keep some forms of caste like passing
of wealth through generations
▪ Family is a caste element
• Status consistency:
o The degree of uniformity in a person’s social standing across varying dimensions
of social inequality
o Caste systems have high status consistency
▪ Same standing as everyone else in the caste group
o Class systems have less status consistency
▪ More difficult to define social positions
▪ Lines less drawn between social statuses
Caste and Class the United Kingdom
• The mix of caste and meritocracy in class systems is demonstrated by the UK
• Had a system of aristocracy that resembled caste
o First estate: Church leaders had a great deal of power
o Second estate: hereditary nobility
▪ Owned most of the nation’s land
▪ Wealthy
▪ No occupations and engaging in work was beneath them
▪ Primogeniture: all property passed to oldest son or other male relation
o Third estate: commoners
▪ Surfs working land
▪ Illiterate
• Meritocracy began to blur the difference between aristocrats and commoners
o Giving rise to a class system
• Traditional titles are put up for sale by aristocrats
• United Kingdom today:
o Small number of British families still hold wealth and prestige
o Traditional monarch is the head of state
o Parliament’s house of lord is composed of peers
o Now the house of commons is in charge
o Prince William married a commoner
o Middle class and working class and lower class
▪ Make up the remaining
o Highly stratified
▪ Slightly more caste like than the US
▪ People in the US see accent as signs of location
▪ UK sees accent as status
Classless Societies?
• Nowhere in the world do we find a nation without social inequality
• Russian Revolution:
o USSR was born out of a Russian revolution which ended a feudal society
o Soviet leaders claimed to have become a classless society
o Stratified into 4 unequal categories
▪ High government officials
▪ Soviet intelligencia: secondary government officials
▪ Manual workers
▪ Peasantry
o Created greater economic equality with sharp differences in power
• Modern Russian Federation:
o Michael Gorbitchov:
▪ Came to power with a program of restructuring
▪ Tried to generate economic growth by reducing the centralized control of
the economy
o One of the most dramatic power reforms in history
▪ Soviet union collapsed
o Remaking itself as the Russian federation
• Class existed regardless of the smaller difference in economic statuses
• Structural social mobility: a shift in the social position of large numbers of people
o Do more to change society than individual efforts
o Turned downward in Russia
▪ Lifespan dropped
▪ Economic turbulence and poor healthcare system
▪ Has recovered
▪ Poverty about 11%
▪ Putin’s control is eroding political freedom
China: Emerging Social Classes
• Sweeping political and economic change has effected China
• Communist party leader Mao Ze Dong declared all work to be equal and claimed social
class no longer existed
o Social differences remained
• Ruled by a political elite
o Then managers of factories
o Industrial workers
o Rural peasants not allowed to leave
• With a new leader came a new class of business owners
• The communist party continues to control the country
o Small but wealthy elite
• Years of rapid growth, now in the middle income zone
