Different theories of Stratification
To say there are many ways that people are "different" is an interesting (if not particularly profound) observation, the validity of which is evidenced by simply looking around - something we can do in the warm-up exercise below.
When we talk about "difference", therefore, we're making a fairly neutral comparison between 'things that are not the same' in the sense that all we're effectively saying is that difference exist (in much the same way as we might observe that 'daylight' is different to 'darkness'). The fact of human difference is not, in itself, particularly significant. What is significant, however, is the:
Meaning of these differences. A teacher, for example, is different to the student he or she teacher. However, if a teacher can direct and control the behavior of their students because of this difference, this becomes something of greater significance because it involves:
• Social differentiation: When we socially differentiate between, say, a teacher and their students, we make a judgement about their relative worth (or status). We are saying, in effect, that these people are not merely 'different', but that the difference is significant because it's rooted in the nature of their relationship, considered, for example, in term of:
• Inequality: A teacher has a different social status to their students, one that allows them to do things (such as direct the behavior of the class) that students are not allowed to do. This, in turn, is related to concepts of:
• Ideology because social differentiation involves ideas about how teachers and students should behave in term of:
• Value relating to the teacher and students roles, and
• Norms that operate within the classroom.
• Power: Social differentiation involves the idea that people of different statuses have differential access to power. A teacher may, within reason, punish a student, but the student has no such power.
If social differentiation relates to the idea that some forms of difference have a higher level of social significance (status) than others, it's a short step to think about their relative status in hierarchical terms, which is where we can start to talk about:
Social Stratification: This represents a process whereby different social groups are ranked higher or lower on some form of scale, usually, but not exclusively, in terms of categories such as class, age, gender and ethnicity. Sociologically, Giddens (2001) defines stratification as 'structured inequalities between different groupings' while Crompton (1993) argues it involves ' a hierarchical system of inequality (material and symbolic), always supported by meaning system that seeks to justify inequality'.
Historically there have been a number of different:
Types of stratification, involving major forms such as:
• Slave system that have appeared throughout human history (from Ancient Greece and Rome to eighteenth/nineteenth-century Britain and the USA)
• Caste systems (Characteristic of some parts pf south East Asia)
• Estates system (Characteristic of feudal or early modern societies) and, of course,
• Class systems, which characterise stratification in modern societies such as Britain. In this respect, Class Stratification in our society is conventionally considered a:
Primary system of stratification (with stratification based around age, gender and ethnicity being secondary forms), on the basis that economic rankings (and their associated inequalities associated) with non-economic differences in Status (Which may, of course, develop alongside primary system - upper-class men for example may have a different social status to upper-class women).
Scott (1999), for example, argues social stratification'... emphasises the idea that individual are distributed among the levels or layer of a social hierarchy because of their economic relationships'. For Scott social stratification is a particular form of social division that differs from other types of division on the basis that it is 'solidly based in economic relations'.
Digger deeper: Types of Stratification
We can outline the general characteristics of the different types of stratification we've just identified in the following terms.
Slave systems
Slavery is one of the oldest (and most persistent) forms of stratification that involves, according to Mazur (1996), a situation in which one group claims ownership over another, such that the former take upon themselves 'the right to use, abuse and take the fruits of the latter's labour'. The slave, therefore, is the:
• Property of their owner. Slave systems arguably reached their height in Europe and the USA between the Seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, when the capture and shipment and slaves from Africa (in particular) took when on a global dimension. Perhaps the most familiar example of a slave-based modern society is that of the US southern states in the nineteenth century, tightly regulated system supported by a variety of laws governing the behavior of the enslaved (whether they could marry, where they could live, when and if they could travel and so forth).
Although opinion differ as to whether slaves can be considered a 'class' in the same way that slaves owners were a class - Gingrich (2002), for example, suggests slaves are a status group because, in Weberian term, 'they have nothing to sell' and hence have no market situation - it's clear that, in status terms, slaves were always at the very bottom of society, or even outside it. Slave status was also:
Ascribed- Children born to slave parents also became slaves. Slaves could, however, be given their freedom by their owners.
The basic belief system (ideology) underpinning slavery, at least in early modern society, was usually one of biological superiority - slaves were 'naturally inferior' to their owners.
Feudal (estate) Systems
Estate system Characterise pre-modern, pre- industrial, agrarian (agriculture) societies, such as Britain in the Sixteenth century, and are based around:
• Land ownership: In agriculture (or feudal) societies, where there are no factories or machines to produce goods, farming is the main economic activity, which makes land the single most important commodity. To own land, therefore, is to be powerful, since you control something vital to the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people. Land ownership was not distributed fairly or equally and, in feudal Britain, land could not be legally owned; it was considered the property of God and, as such, was held 'in trust' by the monarch, as God's earthly representative. Land was delegated, initially by the monarch, in a:
• Pyramid structure of land divisions and stratification ranks.
The system was based on a based on a strong structure of rights and duties, underpinned by:
• A religious belied system that stressed its 'divine nature'. The Church taught that God has created the world in His image and, since God was all-powerful, it was not for mere mortals to question or challenge the social order.
• Military might, consolidated in the hands of the nobility and their knight-retainers.
• Legal Sanctions: different levels in the structure had different legal rights - serfs, for example, although not slaves, were under the control and patronage of their feudal lord, who could impose restrictions on their behaviour: whom they could marry, where they could live and so fourth.
