13.1 social stasification

1. Summary

Social stratification refers to social phenomenon of the divisions of people in society made by socioeconomic factors. A social classes can be formed by the kinship, clan, tribe, or caste, or all four.

There are 4 principles when we talk about social stratification. 

1. Social stasification is about property of the society not individuals in society.

2. Social stasification can be reproduced over the generation.

3. Social stasification can be found in every society but it has uniqueness of the society by society.

4. Social stasification can be a qualitative beliefs and attitudes about social status more than the quantitative inequality.

Social mobility means the intragenerational or intergenerational movement of the people in the society's stasification. There is an open stratification systems that can move to another social status the societies with this system has higher level of intragenerational mobility. There is also a closed stratification systems with no mobility like caste system, society like this has no social status changes.

In sociology many theories developed to explain this social stasification.

Marxism focused on the capitalism. According to marxism there are two classes determined by the onwership of the capital. Marxism also claimed that there was no class in the 'egalitarian' hunter gather society.

Max Weber claimed there are more than two classes of the marxist assumptions he said that there are four main social classes. He also introduced the three factors class, status, and power.

Class: A person's economic position in a society determined by the birth and economic achievement. Unlike Marx, Weber thought this is important but not the most important factor. 

Status: This is not only refer to economic status. The poet and priest can be not rich but they get social respect by their status.

Power: A person's ability to get their way despite the resistance of others especially in social changes. In this article it talks about the Member of United States Congress who may have less wealth than 1% riches but they have the power to make social changes.

There are many factors that decide the social stasification such as economic inequality, gender, race, occupation and skill levels, age, education level, education level of parents, and geographic area.

2. Discussion

When we talk about the global stasification many people talk something similar that dependency theory talks about. I think dependency theory is not totally wrong theory but it also undermine the factors of the failed plan made by the 3rd world countries. For example countries like China was one of the poorest nation in the world and they are even poor than the Phillipines in the year 1990. But the china achieved enormous economic growth even during the era of the globalization. And they are now above the world average. 

However as dependency theory well talked the western capitalist countries exploited the 3rd world even today by various factors. I recently found the inequality of the environment pollution. There is the term called 'error of the Netherlands' which means that some scholars argued that look at Netherlands they end the pollution although they are wealthy. But is this true? Netherlands send their trashes into poor countries not only Netherlands the USA, France Japan and even south korea is doing this. The rich nations that has a responsibility for the environment pollution is now passing it to the 3rd world. This show the global stasification I think

3. Question

1. What make the inequality between social stasification worse?

2. What factors cause the form of social satisfaction in mordern society?