SOCY1050 Lecture 1: Week 1 Lecture
Week 1 SOCY
Class and Stratification
• What is Social Class?
- Structural inequalities between different people
- an economic stratification
- outcome of modernity
- determined by wealth and occupation
- more mobile or fluid compared with other stratification systems
- impersonal: inequalities are in relation to structures or systems, rather than
• each other
- durability to those inequalities, e.g. differences according to race, gender,
• economic status, occupation
- location in the strata largely beyond individual choice or agency
- categories continue to exist even when individuals move out of them
• Social Stratification: the ranking of people and the rewards they
receive based on objective criteria, often including wealth, power
and/or prestige
• more of what you do, whether than what you are
• more mobile or fluid – does not stay the same as it always did
• how it relates to your individual agency and choice – persist and apply themselves
• independent of people moving on from it – classes are in competition with each
other – even if the members move up and down it will still exist
• Social Mobility:
• What is social mobility?
o The ability to change social classes
▪ Theories of Social Mobility:
o Achievement (Blau and Duncan)
o Inheritance (Sewell et al.)
▪ Social mobility can be on a macro-level, and can be explained by
structural mobility, for example, agriculture _ manufacturing _service
economy
▪ Social mobility is usually used to explain the movement of individuals
who have a group identity in society between different social strata.
For example, the social mobility of a person from a working-class
background, to a semi-middle class social status
Key Ideas:
• Income
• Wealth
• Power
• Prestige
• Social class and mobility
Theories:
Document Summary
More mobile or fluid compared with other stratification systems impersonal: inequalities are in relation to structures or systems, rather than: each other. For example, the social mobility of a person from a working-class background, to a semi-middle class social status. Income: wealth, power, prestige, social class and mobility. Theories: marxism and the idea of revolutions with class struggle and conflict, the problem of surplus value (working class and the capitalists (someone is always. Ideas of social evolution (latest and not the last) exploited, but just to what extent: alienation with the working class exploited materially, also a moral and empirical observation (a just system but ultimately overcome) Critics: emergence of the middle class did not polarise, technology benefitted all workers in the movement. Introduction of the welfare states a means of control of the working classes or a system of redistribution and an equalising force: new ruling elites emerged of wealth and power.
