SOCIAL STRATIFICATION:


Social strata are levels of social statuses.

Members of a society who possess similar amount of wealth, power, and privileges occupy each social stratum.

Organized systems of such strata are conceptualized as social stratification system.

Social stratification refers to arrangements of any group or society into a hierarchy of positions that are unequal with regard to power, property and social evolution.

Social stratification refers to a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy.


Determinants of social stratification in Pakistan:

Economic resources
Occupations
Prestige
Caste
Education
Political power… Are the determinants of social divisions


Economic resources:
The size of landholdings in rural areas belong to upper classes.
While the tenants, blacksmiths, cobblers, barbers belong to the lower class.

Occupation:
Landowners, industrialists, businessmen, high government officials, corporate officials belong to the upper class.

Servicemen, small businessmen, whose income equals to their expenditures, are the middle class.

Manual workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, washermen all constitute the lower class.

Prestige:
Respect of an individual in society is related to the level of prestige that he enjoys.
Prestige includes nobility, harmlessness, participating in social welfare projects, helping the needy etc.

Power:
Power gains one respect. In Pakistan, following characteristics could be important:
Outspoken in public, educated, well off in financial resources, interest in solving people's problems, active, religious oriented etc.

Caste:
Caste system in Pakistan is an important element in social stratification. Some castes are considered high, some are low.

Education:
Education like all other societies in the world, defines social status in Pakistan too.
Educated people are better rated and respected socially owing to their occupations, professions and status while illiterate people always belong to lower class.

Generally, Four classes exist in Pakistan.

High:
This class divides into two groups: lower‐upper and upper‐upper. The lower‐upper class includes those with “new money,” or money made from investments, business ventures, and so forth. The upper‐upper class includes those aristocratic and “high‐society” families with “old money” who have been rich for generations. These extremely wealthy people live off the income from their inherited riches. The upper‐upper class is more prestigious than the lower‐upper class.

Wherever their money comes from, both segments of the upper class are exceptionally rich. Both groups have more money than they could possibly spend, which leaves them with much leisure time for cultivating a variety of interests. They live in exclusive neighborhoods, gather at expensive social clubs, and send their children to the finest schools. As might be expected, they also exercise a great deal of influence and power both nationally and globally.

Middle: The middle class are the “sandwich” class. These white collar workers have more money than those below them on the “social ladder,” but less than those above them. They divide into two levels according to wealth, education, and prestige.

The lower middle class is often made up of less educated people with lower incomes, such as managers, small business owners, teachers, and secretaries.

The upper middle class is often made up of highly educated business and professional people with high incomes, such as doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and CEOs.

The working class:

The working class are those minimally educated people who engage in “manual labor” with little or no prestige. Unskilled workers in the class—dishwashers, cashiers, maids, and waitresses—usually are underpaid and have no opportunity for career advancement. They are often called the working poor. Skilled workers in this class—carpenters, plumbers, and electricians—are often called blue collar workers. They may make more money than workers in the middle class—secretaries, teachers, and computer technicians; however, their jobs are usually more physically taxing, and in some cases quite dangerous.

Lower:
The lower class is typified by poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. People of this class, few of whom have finished high school, suffer from lack of medical care, adequate housing and food, decent clothing, safety, and vocational training. The media often stigmatize the lower class as “the underclass,” inaccurately characterizing poor people as welfare mothers who abuse the system by having more and more babies, welfare fathers who are able to work but do not, drug abusers, criminals, and societal “trash.”


SIGNIFICANCE OF SOCIAL CLASS

Social class determines the life chances of an individual:

It implies that the social class determines the fate we can expect in life.

opportunities and rewards are affected by class position.

Poor nutrition for the mother may affect the health and vigor of the fetus before birth,

Social class influences physical and mental health:

Differential death rates are cause of unequal access to medical care and nutrition.

Lower class experiences stress from unemployment, dirty and dangerous work, the threat of eviction, expenses of life, and so on.

Social class and family life:
Social class influences the mate selection, age at marriage, number of children, child rearing patterns,
women empowerment, educational aspirations and achievements.

Lower class children supposed to be obedient at home and at work, whereas middle class children are trained to be creative, independent, and tolerant.

The vision of children about future varies by social class.

Social class and education/employment opportunities:

Type of education. Public schools are for the poor and private schools are for the rich.

With better qualifications from prestigious institutions children from affluent families have better employment opportunities.

Social class and lifestyles:

Social class determines the lifestyle of the people.
Individual identities are structured to a greater extent around lifestyle choices – how to dress, what to eat, how to care one’s body, and where to relax.

cultural tastes and leisure pursuits.

distinctive lifestyle and consumption patterns.

Social stratification is universal but variable. Social stratification is found everywhere. At the same time, what is unequal and how unequal people are vary from one society to another

Social stratification persists over generations. In all societies parents pass their social position along to their children, so that patterns of inequality stay much the same from generation to generation. Some individual experience change in their position in the social hierarchy. For most people, social standing remains much the same over a lifetime.

People with the greatest social privileges express the strongest support for their society’s social stratification, while those with less social resources are more likely to seek change.


THEORIES OF CLASS AND STRATIFICATION

The ideas developed by Karl Marx and Max Weber forms the basis of most sociological analysis of class and stratification.

Stratification and Conflict

Social conflict perspective argues that, rather than benefiting society as a whole, social stratification benefits some people at the expense of others. This analysis draws heavily on the ideas of Karl Marx, with contributions from Max Weber.

Karl Marx: Class and Conflict

Marx (1818-1883) argued that the distinctions people often make between themselves – such as clothing, speech, education, or relative slavery – are superficial matters that camouflage the only real significant dividing line:

people either (the bourgeoisie) own the means of production or they (the proletariat) work for those who do.

This is the only distinction that counts, for these two classes make up modern society.

Means of production refer to the sources by which people gain their livelihood.

Hence people’s relationship to means of production determines their social class.

Before the rise of modern industry,there were two main classes those who owned the land and those actively engaged in producing from it (serfs, slaves and free peasantry).

In modern industrial societies, factories, offices, machinery and the wealth or capital needed to buy them have become more important.

The two main classes are those who own these new means of production –

the industrialists or capitalists called as Bourgeoisie – and those who earn their living by selling their labor to them – the property-less working class called as proletariat.

According to Marx in Das Kapital three great classes exist in modern societies:

The owners of mere labor power, the owners of capital, and the landlords, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit, and ground-rent.

The relationship between classes is an exploitative one.

In feudal societies, exploitation often took the form of the direct transfer of produce from the peasantry to the aristocracy.

Serfs were compelled to give a certain proportion of their production to their aristocratic masters.

In modern industrial societies, the source of exploitation is less obvious, and Marx devoted much attention to trying to clarify its nature.

In the course of the working day workers produce much more than is actually needed by employers to repay the cost of hiring them.

[Value of product of labor – value of labor = the surplus value] This surplus value is the source of profit, which capitalists are able to put to their own use.

The labor becomes a commodity. Wealth is produced on a scale far beyond anything seen before, but workers have little access to the wealth their labor creates.

The capitalist becomes richer while the proletariat gets poorer.

Marx used the term pauperization to describe the process by which the working class grows increasingly impoverished in relation to the capitalist class.

Even if the workers become more affluent in absolute terms, the gap separating them from the capitalist class continues to stretch ever wider.

These inequalities between the capitalist and working class were not strictly economic in nature.

Work itself becomes dull and oppressive in the modern factories resulting in dehumanizing the work environment.

The capitalist class draws its strength from more than the operation of the economy.

Through the family, opportunity and wealth are passed down from generation to generation.

Moreover, the legal system defends this practice through the law of inheritance.

Similarly the exclusive schools bring children of the elite together, encouraging informal social ties that will benefit them throughout their lives.

In this way capitalist society reproduces the class structure in each new generation.

Marx saw great disparities in wealth and power arising from this productive system, which made class conflict inevitable.

Over time, Marx believed, oppression and misery would drive the working majority (labor class) to organize, challenge the system, and ultimately overthrow the capitalist system.

Such a class struggle has been part of the history of societies.

According to Marx; through this revolution the capitalist system is replaced by socialist system resulting in a classless society.

In such a society, humans will be able to live in a world where they are not prevented from realizing their full potential by the constraints of class societies.

In a classless society the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” comes into operation.

Critical evaluation:

How do we motivate people to do their job efficiently? Motivating people to perform various social roles requires some system of unequal rewards.

Severing rewards from performance generates low productivity.

In capitalist societies the wages of workers have increased.

Here people talk of The Affluent Worker.

Between the two classes a third class of petite bourgeoisie – small owners, managers, supervisors, and autonomous workers has emerged.

Such a situation is not going to let the capitalist system to collapse.



Max Weber (1864-1920) built his approach to stratification on the analysis developed by Marx, but he modified and elaborated it.
Like Marx, Weber regarded society as characterized by conflicts over power and resources.
Yet where Marx saw polarized class relations and economic issues at the heart of all conflict, Weber developed a multidimensional view of society.

Max Weber gave a model of three elements for social stratification Class, Status:

1.Economic Resources
2.Prestige
3.Political Power

Social stratification is not simply a matter of class or economic resources , according to Weber, but is also shaped by two other aspects: status and power.

These three overlapping elements of stratification produce an enormous number of possible positions (inequality) within society, rather than the rigid bipolar model, which Marx proposed.

Economic Differences
According to Weber class divisions derive not only from control or lack of control of the means of production, but from economic differences, which have nothing directly to do with property. Such resources include especially the skills and credentials, or qualifications, which affect the types of job people, are able to obtain.

Weber believed that an individual’s market position strongly influences his or her ‘life chances’.

The market positions (capacities) people have in terms of the skills they bring to the labor market as employees, explains the rewards they will receive.

Where people have good market capacity they will have very good life chances: these chances include income, perks, and pensions
together with less tangible benefits such as security of job, pleasant working environment and considerable autonomy at work.

Those in managerial or professional occupations earn more, and have more favorable conditions of work, for example, than people in blue-collar jobs.

The qualifications they possess, such as degrees, diplomas and the skills they have acquired, make them more ‘marketable’ than others without such qualifications.

Managers of corporations control the means of production although they do not own them.

If managers can control property for their own benefit – awarding themselves huge bonuses and magnificent perks.
it makes no practical difference that they do not own the property that they so generously use for their own benefit.


Prestige(social honor): in Weber’s theory refers to differences between social groups in the social honor or prestige they are accorded by others. Presently status is being expressed through people’s styles of life. Markers and symbols of status—such as housing, dress, manner of speech, occupation – all help to shape an individual’s social standing in the eyes of others. People sharing the same status form a community in which there is a sense of shared identity.

While Marx believed that status distinctions are the result of class divisions in society, Weber argued that status often varies independently of class divisions. Possession of wealth normally tends to confer high status, but there are many exceptions. Olympic gold medalists, for example, may not own property, yet they may have very high prestige. Property and prestige is not one way street: although property can bring prestige, prestige can also bring property.

Power, the third element of social class, is the ability to control others, even against their wishes. Weber agreed with Marx that property is a major source of power, but he added that it is not the only source.

With time, industrial societies witness the growth of the bureaucratic state. This expansion of government and other types of formal organizations means that power gains importance in the stratification system.


be groups possessing effective political power without economic leverage (military, trade union). Therefore inequality could there due to political power.

In Weberian perspective society can be divided in 2+ classes as below:

UPPER CLASS
Upper class
Upper middle class

MIDDLE CLASS
Middle -middle class
Lower middle class

WORKING CLASS
Skilled manual workers
Semi-skilled workers.
Unskilled manual workers.

THE POOR

Weber’s theory comes closer to explaining the dynamics of stratification in modern societies.

Weber anticipated the proliferation of classes, with a new class of white-collar employees, administrators, technicians and civil servants, who are growing in number and importance.

Property relations are important (Marx) but the market position and marketability is decisive in determining an individual’s class position.

Weber rejected Marx’s view that the workers (or employees) have nothing but their labor to sell to the highest bidder. The reality is that:

•Workers possess skills.

•The distribution of skills can be controlled (keep it scarce).

•Increase skill marketability.

Comparative picture of the conflict approach by Marx and Weber