SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
Whatever we see around us seems very natural. To understand it, lets
turn to examine - is social stratification natural?
Hunting-gathering for millions of years. Animal-rearing 12,000 years,
agriculture 10000-8000 years. How to know about them:
Ngatjatjara
Gather fruits, hunt small animals. Minimum resources and minimum needs,
lots of easily available food.
Here, the structure is such that more or less everybody has an equal
chance of doing well.
Meyer Fortes: number of positions of high prestige in a society are not
less than the number of people who can claim those positions.
e.g. great archers.
In contemporary society
Social stratification is a structural phenomenon.
Inequality, failure is partly a structural problem. It is only partly
my own difficulty in responding to and coping with the structure.
Three types of domination: 1. force; 2. persuasion (gaining
acceptance); 3. situational.
Movement from slavery to feudal (special case - caste) to class
societies.
Three basic ways of describing the older kinds of social groups in
India:
1. Varna 2. Jati 3. Gotra
Caste system
Endogamous groups
Work links
Ranked by various systems of ideas, e.g. the varna theory.
purity/pollution, power / aggressiveness, e.g.jat cultures. Hierarchy.
some common culture
often a shared political / arbitration system, too.
Class System
Class - no legal sanction; achieved status; dependent on economic
resources; impersonal connections.
The new class system which emerges, is definitely a much freer world.
But even class has serious problems of domination. Here they are
sometimes more difficult to see, but they are still there. The system
of stratification has changed.
Structural-functional perspective.
The better textbooks don't even mention this. But its very important to
analyze this since most Multiple components interacting
(functioning) to perpetuate the system. Talcott Parsons - value
consensus and this is what the whole of the society seems to focus
around.
Kingsley E. Davis Wilbert E. Moore: functionalist theory of
stratification.
different roles, which need to be filled. e.g. doctors, engineers,
managers, businessmen, sweepers, mechanics, peons. Functional
importance of certain jobs.
Need right people for right jobs.
Need right kind of training for right kinds of jobs.
People should feel motivated to do those jobs.
CRITICISMS:
Melvin M. Tumin
How to say doctor is more functionally important or sweeper, and that
salary is proportional to that. Or that stock market manipulator is
more important than engineer.
Relation of power (arbitrary) defines social stratification, not
functional needs.
Getting of right people - too restricted. can often lead to mismatches.
Training is often only a formality or unrelated.
Can actually lead to loss of motivation. Social stratification can
actually lead to de-motivation of people.
Power can also lead to distortion - e.g. jhola doctors and mbbs doctors
in big cities.
Conclusion: functional justification is like varna system, a set of
ideas that justify what we think.
Structural-conflict
Social inequality is neither necessary and nor does it actually lead to
social order. It is because of unequal distribution of power and
resources in society and a primary source of conflict, coercion and
unhappiness.
The frustration is because of the very structure of inequality in
society. How can this be so - let us look at two sets of theories,
which talk about structural-conflict and why the structure is such that
there is conflict and frustration in society and how solutions can be
found for this. Marxist and Weberian perspectives on frustration.
KARL MARX
Marx - labour as happiness (with satisfaction) and absence of
satisfaction as unhappiness (alienation).
Focus on economic relations. Loss of fruits of labour -
hunter-gatherers, peasants/landlords, artisans, workers/owners.
Exploitation.
Domination by nature, domination by property, shift to domination by
capital. Capitalists (also called bourgeois) and proletarians.
A relationship of integration, exploitation and domination and
violence, centred around economic relations. All aspects of society
support this.
MAX WEBER
Marxist structural conflict - look at the tension between two groups on
the basis of their position in the production system.
Weber - major contribution of analysis of bureaucracy.
Weber - cannot analyze social stratification only on the basis of your
position in the production system
class
status
party
Each one of these can led to complex social stratification systems.
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Social mobility v/s change in the system of social stratification.
Movement of individuals and groups between different positions in a
system of social stratification.
Vertical mobility. Horizontal mobility. Downward mobility.
Does this change the system?
Factors that allow / retard vertical mobility in a caste society?
Endogamous groups and their links with work, movement tends to take
place only as a group. Individuals find it difficult to move between
groups.
Sanskritization.
Factors that allow / retard vertical mobility in a class society.
Individualism. Capital - its many forms - economic, cultural,
social.
Peculiar phenomenon in India - caste without the caste system.
Education as acquisition of cultural and social capital. The economy as
defining the limits to mobility.
Consumerism. Formation of groups and discrimination between them.
Processes of usurpation. Process of exclusion.
Westernization.
SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Usually, social mobilities accumulate to gradually produce systemic
change.
Feudal society to class society. Marx and the idea of inner
contradictions.
Illustration of change of classes in industrial revolution.
Many similar changes - growth of reason; growth of freedom; growth of
participation in decision-making; growth of non-selfishness.